


dancing by

by mearcats



Series: i wished on the moon for you [4]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Allusions to Physics and Turner Classic Movies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Found Family, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Jealousy, Lyatt friendship because I have Time Team feels, Mild Kidnapping, Post-Season/Series 02, Saving Rufus, Smut, Time Travel, but then they panic, fast burn, impromptu sleepover, mentions of past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:25:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mearcats/pseuds/mearcats
Summary: What are a new safe house, a new lover, and a new plan, when you're fighting old enemies and old demons?





	1. let it burn

**Author's Note:**

> This picks up just a very short while after Future Lucy and Future Wyatt leave after the events of Chinatown.

It hurts. _Everything_ hurts, he thinks.

Garcia Flynn has remarkably high pain tolerance, but today—the last thirty-six hours, really—is testing him, and he can feel every one of his forty-three years. His arm hurts, he’s light-headed, and his heart aches.

Lucy and Wyatt—the ones from the future—are gone. They were tight-lipped about everything outside of saving Rufus, leaving behind a few supplies and schematics, and giving the Time Team a quick, concise talk about what needed to be done.

She’s different from the Lucy he met all those years ago in Brazil, even if she’s the same age or close to it. She can’t possibly be the same person, can she?

And if she’s Lucy, where is he? Why didn’t some heavily bearded version of him come out of that Lifeboat? He can’t imagine a future where he willingly leaves Lucy, so there’s not exactly a palatable reason for him not being there.

An obvious reason for his absence is his death. It’s depressing, if not exactly surprising. They’re at war with Rittenhouse, clearly still are in this future where he just...isn’t. Casualties are to be expected, and he’s honestly a little surprised he’s still alive in the here and now after all he’s seen and done.

The other explanation for his absence hurts more, somehow, than the possibility of his death and failure.

The other explanation is that he’s not needed anymore, that Lucy asks him to leave. The memory of her and Wyatt comforting each other isn’t far from his mind, and the image burns him. If he’s of no use to Lucy anymore, well…

It makes sense, he thinks dully. To be sure, she finds him useful now. Useful for information, as a sympathetic ear, and even as an appealing distraction (he knows she enjoyed kissing him, but that could be merely physical). But now that Wyatt is at her side, both in the present and the future? He can’t trick himself into pretending she’ll want to stand by a mess of a former terrorist if she can have the person she’s wanted all along.

Now, with his right shoulder and arm essentially keeping him out of commission, unable to protect her or their mission, what can he _possibly_ give Lucy that Wyatt can’t?

It feels, Garcia remembers, like the time he jumped from a second-floor window and went tumbling into shards of glass. As soon as he was out of immediate danger, every single cut had started stinging and then burning in agony, and he still had the scars from it, faded as they were.

He imagines these new scars, both the physical ones and the deeper ones on his soul, will take rather longer to heal.

He makes his way to the small room that he’s called his own for the last few months, feeling both dread and relief at the thought it’s his last night sleeping there. In roughly twelve hours, they’ll be leaving, making their way to the new safe house that Denise has ready.

Garcia debates taking off his turtleneck, but he reconsiders as soon as he takes off his sling and he feels the ache as the painkillers he took start to wear off. He sinks onto his cot, light-headed and tired. He kicks off his shoes but doesn’t bother with removing his socks—he’s not sure he’s capable of it, actually.

He doesn’t remember drifting off, but at some point he gives into his exhaustion and pain.

He startles awake and nearly bangs his head against the wall when he hears a knock at the door. There’s no time to answer before Lucy steps through wordlessly. She closes the door behind her, locks it for good measure (god, he must be out of it if he forgot even that most basic security measure). Even with the gash above her eye and the bruises on her cheek, she’s beautiful.

“Flynn?” The question is small and uncertain. How she can be uncertain baffles him, when he’s so sure he’s made his affection for her clear. There’s a snowball’s chance in hell he’ll turn her away. Maybe she’s here to tell him she figured it out, maybe she’s here to let him down. He feels an uncharacteristic surge of gratitude for Wyatt’s interruption of their talk in Chinatown, even though his heart aches.

He swallows. “What are you doing here, _draga_?” He winces at the endearment that escapes before he can stop it. He struggles to sit, but he abandons that course of action and lets out a hiss of pain.

Lucy hastens over to his side and says, “That’s why I’m here. I was worried when you left so quickly.”

“You don’t need to worry about me; I’ve had worse.”

Garcia can’t see all that well in the dark, but he’s fairly sure she rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t mean you’re not hurt.” Her tone is belied by the gentle way she runs her fingers through his hair.

He forgets himself and leans into her touch for a moment. A smile tugs at her lips, and he reaches for her hand. He brushes his lips across her knuckles before flipping over her hand pressing a lingering kiss to her wrist. He can feel her pulse racing, and a flash of satisfaction overshadows any pain he’s feeling.

She lets out a strangled gasp, her eyes darkening. She bites at her lip, and he can see her emotions play out across her face. There’s desire, uncertainty, and finally, determination.

Pulling her hand out of his, she steps back from the bed. Maintaining eye contact with him, she pulls off her sweater (a part of his mind acknowledges that judging by the size and neckline of the sweater, it was probably his at some point). She looks away to pull off her jeans, and it’s not graceful—she stumbles before righting herself—but he’ll be damned if it isn’t the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

Then Garcia’s brain shorts out. He watches as she removes her bra and steps out of her underwear with no fanfare.

He stares at her where she’s standing naked above him, a glorious and broken angel. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this, even this temporary gift, but he’s not so foolish as to turn her away.

At least when she goes back to Wyatt, when he sees her looking at soldier boy the way he himself looks at her, he’ll have had this.

“Lucy,” he whispers, his tongue heavy and his voice hoarse as he manages to push himself up with his good arm.

She moves back toward him, carefully climbing into the cot beside him. She runs her hand up his arm and across his chest before caressing his face before pulling his face to hers.

His injury burns, not that he plans on telling her that. She presses her lips to his, a gentle, soft thing that feels like a benediction.

For a moment, he’s not sure what to do with his arms. Moving his right one is out of the question, and after waffling briefly, he wraps his left arm around her and lets his hand tangle in her hair as he returns her kiss.

She leans against him, and he can’t hold back the gasp of pain. “Shit, sorry,” she says, pulling back.

“It’s fine,” he protests.

She raises an eyebrow at him and he huffs out a weak laugh of acknowledgment. “I’m not sure how much good I’ll be to you tonight, Lucy.”

“Maybe tonight it’s my turn to be there for you.” Her voice is quiet, but he can hear the steely determination in it, can see the spark of fire in her eyes.

He doesn’t know how to respond, but she saves him from having to say anything. It’s for the best; he would undoubtedly put his foot in his mouth, as is his way with this wonderful, maddening woman.

Lucy reaches for the hem of his shirt. “I’m going to take this off so you can be more comfortable, and tomorrow we’ll find you a button-up or something. Not a turtleneck, at least,” she says.

“But it’s my trademark,” he jokingly protests, grunting as he maneuvers to help Lucy get his clothes off. She shakes her head but smiles.

It takes a shamefully long time, but they finally succeed in getting the turtleneck off. His shoulder throbs, but he know it’s for the best. Without her help, he’d probably have ended up cutting the damn thing off in a day or two.

He’s a little embarrassed about how out of breath he is and the sheen of sweat covering his torso. He’s wanted this for so long, even if he only recently admitted it to himself, so he wishes he could appreciate her nude form the way she deserves.

She doesn’t look put off, her gaze roaming over his body, though concern and want are present in equal measures. “You okay? Are you too tired, or should we try removing your pants too?”

He huffs out a laugh, heat rising in his cheeks. “Trying to get me out of my pants, Lucy?”

She chuckles. “Is it working?”

“Only if you want it to be,” he says.

Lucy nods at him. “I want you,” she replies matter-of-factly. “I also want to not injure you more than you already are.”

Garcia reaches for her, but she swats his hand aside in favor of undoing the button and zipper of his pants. Fortunately, that goes much more smoothly, and she succeeds in getting his boxer briefs off at the same time.

He’s naked before her now, and it’s gratifying to see the heightened color and sheer want in her eyes as she looks him over. He’s hard for her—god, how could he not be, she’s beautiful and awe-inspiring and her touch burns—but he’s also well and truly exhausted.

The lust in her eyes softens as she meets his eyes. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want.”

“It’s not a matter of _want_ , Lucy,” he says, pointedly glancing down at his erection, “so much as the fear I’ll do something like fall asleep on you.”

She carefully climbs into bed with him, let’s him spoon her. It’s tempting to escalate this, to take it further, but he’s also content to feel the warmth of her bare skin against his.

Lucy pulls the blanket over them and intertwines their fingers. “Then sleep.”

&&&

It’s still dark when he wakes again. His shoulder and arm ache, and Lucy’s hair tickles his nose. She’s warm, and his heart clenches at the way her legs tangle with his, the joy of her being alive and in his embrace. She might not be his, but she’s here, and that’s enough.

Garcia pulls her closer, wincing at the twinge of pain.

Then Lucy arches back against him, and he forgets the meaning of the word pain. He forgets the meaning of most words when she shifts against him again.

“Flynn?” Her whisper is quiet, tension in every breath. It’s at odds with her soft touch on the arm he has wrapped around her waist.

He shifts, pulling her on top of him. “Yes?”

Breathless, she says, “I was going to ask if you were up, but…”

“Oh, I’m up, Lucy,” he says, rolling his hips so she can feel just how very _up_ he is, pressing a kiss to her collarbone.

She pulls his lips to hers for a hungry kiss, pulling away briefly to say, “I’ll say,” before returning her mouth to his.

He nearly faints when she grinds against him, letting out a guttural moan at the feel of her core, hot and wet as she brushes against his cock.

Her question is a whisper against his lips. “Not too tired now?”

Garcia feels a swell of masculine pride at the hitch in her voice, but he’s still finding it rather difficult to speak. “Are—are you sure?”

Her response is to settle more firmly in his lap and rock against him. “Yes. You?”

He wants to tell her yes, she can have this, she can have him, she can have _anything_ , but he manages a short nod.

He kisses her again, and god, he never wants to stop. He trails his good hand down to the juncture of her thighs and runs one finger over her folds.

God, he can’t breathe. “Lucy, you’re so wet.”

The blush suffusing her chest spreads to her cheeks, and he wants to remember this forever. “Well, that’s the idea isn’t it?”

He chuckles, but is cut off by her lips against his. He kisses her back, letting his lips wander down her neck. He sucks a mark where her shoulder and neck meet, encouraged by her little gasps and moans.

She’s rocking against him in earnest now, and he’s trying very hard not to finish before they’ve begun. It has, after all, been three years since he’s danced this dance, and it’s with a new partner. Hell, the most he’s done until today has been a couple of kisses with Lucy. He needs to slow down, or this will be embarrassing.

“Protection?” If there’s anything to be learned from the Wyatt and Jessica debacle, it’s that they should probably be careful on that front.

Lucy stops moving and takes a deep breath. “IUD. We’re good.”

Well, then. “I’m not sure I’ll last long,” he confesses.

That soft, warm look returns to her eyes. “That’s fine, just—just keep touching me there, okay?”

He nods before dipping his head and taking one peaked nipple between his teeth. She keens and bucks against him, and he wishes he had the use of his other hand, wishes he could map out her body and explore her more than he’s currently capable of.

She reaches between them and strokes him, and it’s his turn to groan against her chest. She pushes herself up on his chest and guides him to her entrance. They both inhale as he slides inside her. They’re still for a moment, then Lucy exhales and shifts, starting a slow rocking motion.

Garcia still holds his breath, but remembers to reach back down. He rubs his thumb over her clit on her downstroke, and Lucy leans down to kiss him, still moving against him. “Breathe,” she whispers, pulling back.

Finally exhaling, he thrusts up against her. “Lucy, _draga_ , you feel so good,” he says, and it’s a broken sound.

He’s so close, so close, and she seems to sense it, because she rides him faster, harder. He leaves his hand where their bodies are joined so that she can rock against it, and his pleasure threatens to overcome him when he feels her fluttering around his cock.

“Flynnnnnn,” she cries, and he forgets himself. He uses his injured arm to pull her face back to his, cutting her off with a bruising kiss. The pain is nothing to the feel of her, though, and with one last upward thrust, he spills himself inside her.

Lucy slumps over on his chest, breathing heavily. He extracts his hand, wipes it on the scratchy wool of the blanket, and wraps his arm around her. She nestles into his neck, and they lie there a while longer. Finally, she rolls off him with a wince.

She stands, looking around the room.

“What are you looking for, Lucy?” Garcia asks, cold where her body had lain against his. He knows he sounds needy, and he grimaces.

She turns back toward him. “Oh, um, just looking for something to clean up a little?”

The tightness in his chest loosens a little at that. “Towels in the top drawer of the—yeah, those.”

She wipes herself down, and he’s struck speechless when she comes back to the bed and cleans him up. She doesn’t say anything, but she quirks her lip at him and crawls back into bed, careful not to jostle his shoulder.

Garcia presses a kiss to Lucy’s forehead, then the exhaustion tugging at his consciousness claims him.


	2. principles of uncertainty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy attempts to sort her feelings and deal with the consequences of the night she and Flynn shared. Old demons and insecurities abound on all sides, making resolution challenging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm 100% team let both Lucy and Flynn have complex feelings and let them be disasters about it. This is them mostly being disasters, even if they do care deeply for each other and they both know it (which will eventually help, but first they need to be emotional messes).

“Mmm, Lorena…”

Lucy awakes with a start at the muttering of her bed partner. She’s warm, secure in Flynn’s embrace. She flushes, taking stock of their nudity, remembering the pleasure they’d brought each other in the night.

She looks up at his face as he sleeps. He looks younger, softer, and less careworn this way, and she’s hard-pressed to keep from running a hand through his hair. She’s reaching for him when she realizes what he said, whose name was just on his lips.

She tenses in his arms. She’s not ready to leave his embrace—in addition to the night they just shared, Lucy can acknowledge that he’s her best friend. One she has feelings for and who looks at her like she’s the sun itself, but in that regard, she’s been lead astray by her heart before. Recently, in fact.

She snorts, realizing she certainly has a type. Give her an emotionally damaged, time-traveling soldier of a man who has lost his wife and is apparently still mourning her and she’s helpless.

Flynn stirs. He makes a soft sound that’s almost cute, even with the way she’s panicking. He pulls her closer, and she’s tempted, so tempted, to sink back into his embrace.

“Lucy?” His voice is gravelly from sleep, his accent stronger, and it sends a thrill through her. He looks at her from under his unfairly long lashes, hope and uncertainty and what might be panic present in equal proportions.

It would be easy to kiss him now. She could hide from everything going on with the rest of the world for now, and she could pretend she’s not still reeling from loss, unsolicited confessions of love, and meeting a future version of herself.

Lucy might be able to do all that, but when she sees the glint of his wedding ring on the hand on her shoulder, she can’t forget one thing—he obviously still considers himself married, even if Lorena’s gone.

(Had it been her or Lorena in his embrace last night? She’s not sure she can handle the answer.)

A lump rises in her throat, and she swallows before responding, “I’m awake.” She tries to gently detangle her limbs from his, not wanting to aggravate his injury.

He clearly manages to push aside any misgivings he had when he woke up, and he tightens his hold on her. “Where are you going, _mila_?”

The plaintive note in what is undoubtedly some adorable term of endearment nearly undoes her, but she remembers the pain of hearing Wyatt call Jessica “honey” barely two days after whispering sweet nothings in her ears. She can’t do it again.

Lucy hardens herself to her feelings; they won’t help her right now, and she just needs to get out. “We have a busy morning. I—there’s a lot I need to get done before we leave. I’m sure it’s a madhouse out there.”

Flynn’s eyes darken as he realizes she’s trying to distance herself from him. “Lucy, are you—are we okay?”

She stands, wincing at soreness between her legs. “I’m fine. We’re fine,” she lies, back toward him.

His responding snort encapsulates her feelings pretty well. At least she knows she’s still a shitty liar.

“See, I can occasionally be quite perceptive, and you pulling away after we made l—slept together seems to indicate that we might not actually be fine,” he says.

Sighing, she turns to face him. Part of her delights in the way his eyes scan over her still-naked body, even if she has to remind herself this isn’t the time or situation for indulging lust, his or hers.

He reaches for her hand, and she lets him intertwine their fingers. She gives him a small, sad smile. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, darling?”

It terrifies her, him using English to express his affection for her, and it’s what gives her the strength she needs to tell him what’s wrong. “You called me Lorena this morning. Or you called out for her, at least.”

He pales, but takes a deep breath and responds, “Then _I_ should be the one saying sorry, shouldn’t I?”

To her consternation, her eyes well with tears. “No, Flynn, no. I—we probably don’t need to be sorry, either of us, not about this. But I can’t do it again, I can’t. If you get Lorena and Iris back, I don’t want to be—”

“To be what?” He doesn’t let go of her hand, pulls her closer.

“I don’t want to be alone again. I can’t relive the Wyatt and Jessica thing with you too, I can’t. It hurts, and you’ve been here for me when no one else has,” Lucy whispers.

He softens, but unclasps their hands. “I can’t stop loving them, even for you.”

“And I don’t want you to!”

“Then what do you want, Lucy? I’ve done unspeakable things in the name of trying to bring them back. I don’t—I can’t just set them aside, or I’ll have done all that for nothing.” He breaks down then, and her heart shatters for him. For her, for the two of them, bonded together by their brokenness, but torn apart by it all the same.

She reaches out and caresses his face. “You shouldn’t set them aside, Flynn. You deserve to have hope that you can get them back.” Amy is beyond her reach now, thanks to Emma, but god, _someone_ deserves some happiness out of this whole mess.

He squeezes her hand and brushes his lips across her knuckles. “Do you remember what I said to you, in New York in 1780?”

“That you’d walk away from them, even if you get them back,” she replies, voice wavering. Lucy remembers, always remembers.

“I won’t walk away from you, from this, this mission,” he vows. “Not unless you ask me to, that is.”

It’s the perfect thing to say, and it’s absolutely too much. She pulls back, finally turning to the task of locating her clothes.

His words echo throughout the silence the room, and Lucy hears him sigh. She hurries to put on last night’s clothes. When she’s dressed, she digs through the drawer she’s seen him pull sweaters from.

When she finds what she’s looking for, she turns back to him. She hands him the lone button-up she found that didn’t appear to be from the 19th century, and even in her misery, she can’t help but return his small smile. “Thank you, Lucy.”

She wraps her arms around his neck, a quick embrace he doesn’t have time to respond to. “I’m not going to ask you to leave. I’m not strong enough to send you away. You’re my...person,” she says.

Flynn still looks broken and upset, but he also looks pleased at her nebulous compliment. More than anything, though, he looks tired.

Nonetheless, he gets the last word as she heads out his door. “You’re stronger than you know.”

Her heart aches. She desperately wants them to be okay, and she prays they can. She doesn’t have his confidence in her strength, though, and she doesn’t know if this fragile thing between them can survive.

&&&

A few hours later, Lucy follows Jiya into the Lifeboat. As she predicted, it’s been a busy morning. Denise and Connor have gone on ahead with more of their belongings and supplies, since they’ll be flying to the new location. The remaining four of them scramble to get together things they’ll need immediately and to label things that are going to be shipped to them.

It’s slower going than it might be normally, too. Flynn’s injury means he’s not allowed to do any heavy lifting, and they can all tell he’s not pleased about it. He carries what he can, but it’s nowhere near the scope of what he’s normally capable of it.

Lucy didn’t realize forty-something year old men could be so _sullen_.

At the door to the Lifeboat, she turns around for one last look at the place she’s called home for the last few months. She’s torn between wanting to linger and desperately wanting to move on, and if isn’t a metaphor for her life, she’s not Lucy Preston. She turns and heads inside.

Flynn is behind her, silent, with Wyatt bringing up the rear. She takes her usual seat, and expects Flynn to go next to Jiya—after all, he is injured—but he takes his place across from her. Her chest loosens a little when he gives her a tired, fleeting smile.

She doesn’t quite return it, though, when she sees him struggling with his seatbelt. If it were just them, she might crack a joke about how the tables have turned, but given her uncertainty about how things stand between them, she stays quiet. She gets up and maneuvers the belt around his sling, fumbling for a moment until she manages to fasten him in. Lucy wants to reach for his hand, for his sake and hers, but when she looks up, his jaw is clenched and he’s avoiding her gaze.

She settles back into her own seat, and Wyatt comes over to help her. He catches her eye as she whispers her thanks, and she tries to smile, but it’s strained, forced.

A couple minutes later, Jiya clears them for takeoff. Lucy takes a deep breath and feels the familiar compression of time and space about her.

&&&

Lucy feels the wooziness and nausea of time travel when they arrive a few short minutes later. It’s not as bad as usual, probably because this is one of the shortest jumps they’ve done.

All four of them clamber out of the Lifeboat. She tries to help Flynn, but he gives her a testy “no” that reminds her of his irritation with her that she hasn’t seen since before they sprang him out of prison. He looks exhausted, his weariness more than just physical.

 _I guess we’re not completely okay_ , she thinks. But then, she can’t really blame him for not wanting to deal with her after this morning.

“You made it,” Connor says, sweeping over from where he was waiting with Denise. They all manage to get down onto the ground, and Lucy is relieved to see the flooring is concrete, and it looks fairly new.

Denise smiles at them before clapping her hands. “All right, team. This is where we’ll be for the foreseeable future. We’ll do a tour soon, but there’s room for all of us, and we should be safe here.”

They follow her across the vast space that is clearly going to be their command central before ducking through a door to a corridor with rooms on either side. Surprisingly, it’s well-lit and not nearly as dank as the bunker, even though Lucy is _very_ aware she’s underground. It’s large enough not to set off her claustrophobia, but she sighs, wishing for windows.

There’s no such luck, but they all perk up at the spacious rooms—and the abundance of them. “This used to be a mine, but it was recently converted into a safe house for—well, for things like this,” Denise explains.

“The government built the Mines of Moria to hide time travelers?” Jiya asks, and Lucy nearly chortles at the relief and levity of it.

With a reproving (if amused) look, Denise says, “Not exactly, but it is capable of withstanding radiation, if it comes down to it. It’s been my back-up plan for months, though I’m glad we didn’t change our base of operations a few weeks ago.”

There are not-so-surreptitious glances (or glares, in some cases) at Wyatt at this. Lucy takes the opportunity to study the polished concrete on the floor.

“There are enough bedrooms to go around,” Denise continues, “though someone will have to bunk up or take the couch for a few days. I’m renting a house in town, but it’s not available for a few more days.” Michelle and the kids will be joining her at the end of the school year, provided their plans don’t go awry.

Lucy looks at Flynn from under her lashes and flushes. “I’m sure we’ll be able to figure out sleeping arrangements later, but you can take whatever ends up being my room,” she says to Denise. She wants—she _hopes_ —that Flynn will offer to share, even if it she doesn’t have the right to it, even if it would be awkward right now. Besides, none of the men should bunk together, as she can’t imagine any combination of that going well.

As soon as they’ve had a chance to look around at their new home—there’s a well-stocked med bay, a lounge area that has a couch that looks like it might actually be comfortable, a kitchen with a little dining nook off to its side, and _two_ bathrooms, all this in addition to five sleeping spaces—Flynn claims the one bedroom that’s set apart from the rest.

She bites her lip, deciding to claim the one next to the room Jiya requests. With the emotional rollercoaster she’s experiencing in regards to the night she spent with Flynn and his distance since they left this morning—he hasn’t looked at her since they’ve arrived, and she hadn’t realized how normal it’s become to feel his eyes on her when they’re in the same space—she feels more unsettled than ever about what comes next for her.

This can work, even if it’s not her ideal situation. She’d rather be near Jiya, who has neither confessed her love nor slept with her and then had feelings about it in the last few days. If—when—they get Rufus back, she’ll deal with any amorous sounds she might hear from next door like a grownup, with headphones, and ammo to tease them. The prospect of hearing them doesn’t bother her the way it does with any of the rest of them (she grimaces at the idea of hearing _any_ sounds from Connor’s room), because it will mean that they’ve saved Rufus. Wyatt...that one still hurts, rawer still after this morning. Flynn hurts for many of the same reasons, even if the idea of hearing him—because he would be alone, she thinks with a sigh—bothers her in a much different way as well.

Lucy sighs, and Denise turns to look at her. She hasn’t been paying attention, so she’s a little surprised to find herself alone with her boss/surrogate mother.

“Thank you, Lucy,” she says, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing lightly. “I’ll be out of your hair in a few days, and all our stuff should be here by then.”

She attempts a smile. It’s weak, but it works. “It’s no problem. The couch looks way more comfortable than the one at the bunker.”

Denise gives her a knowing look. “It should be, but I can’t imagine that Jiya would have a problem sharing a room with you. Nor would Flynn, probably.”

“Wha—I—” Lucy cuts herself off, not really sure what to say. She knows her cheeks match the tomatoes she saw in the kitchen, though there’s considerably more sputtering on her end than on theirs.

“Relax, Lucy,” Denise says. She looks uncomfortable, but continues, “I’m not—well, I’m not going to judge you for finding comfort. And the walls here are thicker than at the bunker, fortunately.”

 _Why can’t the floor swallow me whole? I could be one with the mountain_ , she thinks, mortified. She can’t meet Denise’s eyes, and honestly, she’s probably never going to look at any of the rest of the team again at this rate. “Did—I’m sorry, I just—”

“Like I said, don’t worry about,” Denise says in a hurry. “I think I’m the only one who heard anything, since I was just making sure everything was en route and passed by. You’re both adults and deserve any respite you might provide each other.”

Lucy nods. “Thank you. I’ll just…” she motions toward the door. She’s more than ready to remove herself from this situation, and she desperately wants to bury herself in either blankets or work.

Denise calls to her when she’s in the doorway. “Look, if you need anything though—anything at all, even if it’s just a friendly ear—I’m here.”

Some of the tension drains from her, and she manages another quiet thank you before she slips down the hall.

&&&

They all meet up again for dinner, an uninspired but filling spread of sandwiches.

It’s a quick meal, and none of them linger. Even Connor is distracted, obviously yearning to return to setting up the tech area of their new home. He and Jiya have been busy setting up command central so that Lifeboat has somewhere to charge, in the hopefully unlikely event that Rittenhouse takes the Mothership out.

Lucy has spent the afternoon organizing part of the lounge into a research-friendly environment, and she’s not mad at the prospect of continuing to build a decent library for them. It doesn’t seem as urgent or pressing as what most of the rest of the team is doing, but it’s what she can do.

As they all rise from the table, Denise tells Wyatt she needs to talk to him. Jiya and Connor disappear, and Lucy is left alone with Flynn.

She looks up at him, and relief floods through her when she finds his eyes on her. She recognizes that expression; it’s the same one he wore in Chinatown, right before Wyatt burst into the room.

Her heart races as she waits for him to speak, to tell her what they do now, how they can fix things between them. She doesn’t think that they’re broken, but things aren’t right, and she doesn’t know how to make them better. She _misses_ him, and they’ve been within fifty feet of each other all day.

He’s struggling to find words, just as he did in San Francisco 130 years ago. After a couple more seconds, he gives up. His shoulders slump as he sighs. “Goodnight, Lucy.”

“‘Night, Flynn,” she whispers to his back as he walks away, retreating to the solitude of his room.

&&&

A few hours later, Lucy lies on the couch in the new lounge, watching with unseeing eyes as a princess and a journalist fall in love and then fall apart in 1950’s Rome. It’s not helping her fragile state of mind, never mind her glee at having access to better cable and streaming options than they did in the bunker.

(In other circumstances, she might scoff at how proud she is of setting up their entertainment system, but she’ll take her victories where she can.)

It’s a testament to how distracted she is that she doesn’t hear Jiya approach. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she steps into her line of vision.

Jiya is wrapped in her sleeping bag, and she waddles over to the other side of the couch. “ _Roman Holiday_ , huh? Mind if I join you?”

Lucy motions for her to take a seat. “It felt like a Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn kind of night.”

“I’d make a comment about thwarted love, but that just seems mean. To both of us,” she says with a wry twist of her mouth.

Lucy snorts. “Well, Emma does call me ‘princess,’ so there’s that.”

She gets a grunt of acknowledgment as they settle in. Lucy reaches for the blanket and pillow she’d set aside earlier and gets comfortable.

They’re quiet after that, the doomed love story playing out onscreen demanding their attention.

When the credits roll, Lucy offers to change the channel or turn the TV off, but Jiya waves her off. “Nah, let’s see what Turner brings us next. Oh... _Godzilla_.”

Lucy laughs. “Hey, I’m down with it if you are.”

“Oh, absolutely. I’m always here for giant lizards as metaphors for nuclear destruction.”

“And here I thought you were more into the prime directive and peaceful inclinations of Star Trek.”

Jiya smiles. It’s a ghost of the radiant, effervescent smiles Lucy remembers, but it’s a start. “I honestly don’t know what I’m into anymore. These are the first movies I’ve watched in three years.”

Lucy winces. “Sorry. I didn’t think.”

“I mean, to be far, there aren’t really guidebooks for navigating how to reintroduce one of your friends to pop culture after she’s had an extended stay in the 1880’s,” she says.

“I guess not.” There’s not really an answer, either, and if there is, Lucy is too tired, still too emotionally raw to find it.

They manage to find a bag of popcorn and a couple of beers, and when everything is ready, they head back to the lounge.

They manage a couple more minutes of _Godzilla_ before Jiya finally speaks again. “I don’t like to sleep alone anymore.”

It’s a non sequitur, but her life feels like a non sequitur right now, so Lucy rolls with it. “Yeah?”

“I mean, except for last night, I’ve spent the last three years sharing a room and sometimes even a bed with at least one of the other girls. And before that, I had Rufus.”

“We’ll get him back. We will.”

When Jiya smiles this time, it’s genuine and real, if still sad. “I know. I—it just doesn’t help me sleep in the here and now.”

Lucy can relate to that, even if she hasn’t had the constant presence of others the way Jiya has. “Nightmares?”

“Yep.”

Jiya appears to be struggling to say something, and Lucy chokes down a hysterical laugh at how frequently she’s seen that lately. “I kind of figured you had them too. I mean, we probably all do at this point. But I kind of thought maybe you weren’t sleeping alone anymore.”

Silence settles in around them. It’s not comfortable, and for the life of her Lucy doesn’t know what to say. “Huh?”

“Listen, you can tell me to shut up if you want to. It’s none of my business, but...you and Flynn?”

She bites her lip. Her cheeks are warm, but hopefully the dim lighting hides it. “I—I—”

Jiya gives her a long, considering look. “The night Jessica kidnapped me and stole the Mothership, I was in the lounge back at the bunker. She looked for you, Lucy.”

“Oh,” she says, blankly. She didn’t even think about that, with everything else happening around them. She takes drink from her beer.

Jiya waits.

Lucy is grateful for the chance to gather her thoughts. “He just held me that night,” she says, then pauses. “Well, we kissed. But mostly we just slept.”

It reminds her of Amy, the way Jiya is staring at her, enraptured with her story. She takes a handful of popcorn and waves her hand to get Lucy to continue.

Jiya was born the same year as Amy, even if she’s three years older now. And sharing this, having _girl talk_ is so heartbreakingly familiar that for a moment she nearly forgets her current romantic dilemma.

“I don’t know how or when it happened, but with everything else that’s happened—with Wyatt and Jess and my mom—Flynn is my best friend.”

“But you’re not with him now,” she says, tilting her head to the side.

Lucy sighs, picking at the fraying hem on the sleeve of her robe. “Um, no. We might have slept together last night.”

“Might have?!”

“Okay, we definitely did,” Lucy laughs at Jiya’s raised eyebrow.

Jiya leans forward. “So...how was it?”

“Seriously?” She’s incredulous. “I wouldn’t think you’d want to know. God, I certainly didn’t ask about you and Rufus.”

“Please, Rufus is like a brother to you. I actually like Flynn, but I don’t have any sisterly hangups. Besides, he has that whole Gregory Peck vibe going on, in a more passionate-yet-unhinged way. Even if he is old.”

Lucy can’t help it; she laughs. “He’s _not_ old, Jiya. I’ll give you the Peck comparison, though.” She tucks further into the couch, pulling the blanket up around her chin.

Jiya mirrors her. Her legs press against Lucy’s, and Lucy thinks of nothing so much as a sleepover. This is total sleepover territory.

“Well? I’m not actually hearing about how it was.”

“Oh my _god_. _Fine_ ,” Lucy says, taking a long sip of her beer. “The sex itself was fantastic.”

“Ah,” Jiya says, nodding in understanding, “but something else about it wasn’t?”

“Understatement. I panicked when we woke up, and then _he_ panicked.”

Jiya hums. “Hmm. I wouldn’t have pegged him as the panicky type. Rufus, on the other hand, basically made me fill out a questionnaire after the first night we slept together.”

Lucy giggles, “And yet you fell in love with him anyway.”

“I was already in love with him, which made it a lot easier, that’s for sure,” she says.

There’s a pause. It’s not a lull, but Lucy once again needs to gather her thoughts. “I care about Flynn. I just don’t know if I love him, or if I can.”

“You can do a whole lot of things, Lucy,” Jiya tells her, pushing up to lean against one of the armrests.

She gets chills at the near echo of Flynn’s words, especially when she remembers Jiya’s visions. “You didn’t... _see_ anything, did you?”

Jiya pauses, but then shakes her head. “I see a lot of things, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that nothing is inevitable unless we make it so.”

Lucy nudges Jiya with her foot. “Now who’s not answering questions?”

“It’s—well, it’s complicated. The closer we are to an event in the timeline, the less focused it is. So something that might happen in the next week might just be a flash or a blip. But the further back in time you go, the more, I don’t know, settled it is, so you can see whole stretches of events unfolding.”

“That’s very...quantum?”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “It’s a lot easier to see the past than the future, I don’t even know what I’m seeing half the time when I look ahead.”

It’s a lot to process, Lucy realizes. “It sounds exhausting, honestly.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but still. And anyway, I try not to look for you all when I’m seeing. It’s...weird and invasive, and nothing’s set in stone.”

“I like that,” Lucy tells her decisively.

Jiya smiles. “This is fun, you know? I didn’t have a sister, and I haven’t been close enough for girl talk to anyone since college.”

“What about San Francisco?”

“I loved them, but at the same time, I couldn’t talk to them about Star Trek or women’s rights. We just didn’t have the same frame of reference, you know?”

Lucy huffs her agreement. “Story of our lives now, right?”

“I’ll say,” Jiya nods. “Anyway, this is nice. It’s nice and wholesome, in a way, to be talking about boys and movies. It’s not life-or-death,” she says, and then catches herself. “Usually, at least. And I know it sometimes _feels_ like death.”

It’s a shameless and transparent attempt to smooth things over and to get her to talk, and Lucy can’t even bring herself be mad about it. “It doesn’t feel like death, not at all. I just had the somewhat belated realization that Flynn isn’t over his wife and daughter.”

“Should he be, though?”

“God, no. I can’t even imagine losing people I loved like that,” Lucy says, looking over at Jiya, “and of course he still loves them and wants them back, and he _should_. But, Jiya, he still wears his wedding ring. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I can’t…”

Jiya softens. “You can’t do that again, not after Wyatt.”

“No,” she says simply, some of the tension leaving her shoulders at the understanding and compassion in Jiya’s voice.

“Oh, well, speaking of Wyatt, I _may_ have listened in on his and Denise’s conversation.”

She loves Jiya for her blatant changing of the subject and the complete and utter lack of subtlety. “Eavesdropping? You? But do tell.”

Lucy hears the crinkle of Jiya’s sleeping bag as she pulls it up around her face—one thing this new safe house has in common with the bunker is that it’s cold—and nods. “Apparently, Wyatt is grounded for now. He’s not allowed to go on any missions until Denise okays it, and if he requests time above-ground, it’ll be denied.”

“Shit. Why?”

“Oh, come on, Lucy. He has a wife in Rittenhouse, even if they aren’t on the best of terms.”

“Understatement,” she says wryly.

Jiya gives her a quelling look. “Anyway, even if he didn’t mean to, it would be easy for him to compromise us, especially right now.”

“He’s...kind of a mess right now, isn’t he?” Lucy decides she won’t get into Wyatt’s ill-timed confession of love, especially as he’s isolated himself just as much as Flynn since their future selves came for a visit.

“We all are,” Jiya says.

Lucy hums her agreement, and they finally fall silent. It’s been a long day, and she’s exhausted, so when her eyelids droop, she gives in to slumber.

&&&

When she rubs the sleep out of her eyes and rouses herself enough to look at the clock, Lucy is pleased to see that in spite of her late night, she hasn’t slept the day away. It’s still fairly early, and she’s still tired from her impromptu sleepover with Jiya, but it’s enough for now.

At some point in the night (and god, it’s hard to know what time it is at any given point without even the slightest external reference), Jiya got up and went back to her room. She did manage to poke Lucy and wake her enough to mutter that she could bunk with her until her own room was ready.

She’d gone back to sleep. She’s always found it difficult to sleep well somewhere new, and apparently this is no exception.

So Lucy is very ready for coffee. She’s not sure what’s on the agenda today, for her or anyone else, but caffeine is an absolute necessity.

She considers going to the kitchen to make some, but she hears muffled noises indicating that someone else is in there. Lucy isn’t sure she’s ready to interact with whoever it might be.

It’s Flynn. She knows before he peeks his head into the lounge, the scent of coffee preceding him into the room.

She takes in the bags under his eyes and the glimmer of uncertainty in them as he approaches her wordlessly and hands her a mug of coffee.

Lucy takes his silent offering and gestures for him to join her, if he so chooses.

He sits next to her, not on the far side of the couch as she thought he would. She might not have any idea what’s going on or how to address everything between them, but this is good. It’s familiar, and she feels completely safe for the first time in days.

She gives him a tremulous smile as his leg brushes against hers, and he returns it.

It’s such a small thing, but the gesture is a relief. The future and past might be unknowable and ever-changing, but at least right now, she’s not alone.


	3. you've been lonely too long

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flynn's injury heals, and he takes a couple of small steps forward.

Sometimes, saving history feels like Neil Armstrong’s words, a small step that’s simultaneously a giant leap. Other times it’s one step forward, two steps back. To Garcia’s consternation, that split seems to have carried on over to all aspects of his life.

Alas, it’s more the latter than the former. When they initially get to the new safe house—which they’ve creatively decided to call The Mine—he’s exhausted and feels capable of little other than sleeping, changing his bandages, and making coffee for Lucy in the mornings.

Matters between the team seem...tense. Not the entire team, to be sure, but Wyatt is bouncing around between the five stages of grief (anger seems to be the most common, though). It affects them all, casts a pall over every room he’s in. And unfortunately, with his grounding, he’s there all the time.

Lucy tells him over breakfast about a week after their arrival. As usual, he makes coffee for the two of them. She pours milk over their cereal, and his heart aches at the lovely domesticity of it. “Oh, so you know, Wyatt is grounded, for lack of a better term.”

“Grounded, like a disobedient teenager?”

She glowers at his snarky response. “No, like a soldier who’s been ordered not to leave base.”

Garcia makes a noncommittal sound. Really, is that any different than for the rest of them? And she looks lovely, so lovely, her annoyance at him bringing color to her cheeks.

On the surface, things are normal between them again. He makes her coffee, he pines. She looks at him, and then looks away. They have their unspoken conversations, and he burns when her hand brushes against his.

Oh, but it’s so much worse now. Now that he knows what it is to hold her, to kiss her, to be inside her—her absence from his arms is another injury on top of the ones he sustained a short time ago.

It’s not hopeless, though; he clings to the memory of her leaning into his good side while they watched the Great British Bake Off (“Even vigilante fugitives need light-hearted baking competitions, Flynn.”). She looks at him like he’s a safe haven, and that—well, that’s everything.

Garcia wishes he could find the words to tell her, to convince her, that he’s here for  _her_.

He’s still hurting from what happened the morning after they slept together, but more than anything, he’s confused. She doesn’t seem to be finding comfort with Wyatt. Indeed, she seems to look to him for comfort. And Garcia gives it, because he’s not sure he’s capable of co-existing with her without adoring her, without trying to do everything he can to make her life better.

Lucy glances over at him as they finish up their cereal, a slight smile on her lips. It’s all he can do not to reach for her hand, or do something so monumentally foolish as confessing his love. Alas, good rarely comes from him opening his mouth and using words.

Blessedly, Denise enters the kitchen before he can say or do anything to make himself or Lucy panic. “Oh, good, you’re both here.”

He sees a blush on Lucy’s cheeks, but turns his attention to Denise, holding out the box of Grape Nuts. “Yes? Cereal?”

“No, thank you. Flynn, I’ve made an appointment for you with a doctor I trust to check on your shoulder.”

He grimaces. “If I must.”

“Yes, you must. We need to make sure you’re getting better.”

Waving his spoon at her, he says, “Have no fear, Denise, soon I’ll be ship-shape and useful again.”

She gives him a sharp, considering look.

Lucy is the one who speaks though, reaching out to touch his arm. “That’s not—” She cuts herself off and looks down at her cereal.

After a moment of waiting for her to finish her thought, Denise shrugs. “Well, we’ll head out for your first appointment at ten. And I wanted to talk to you both anyway, now that we’re a little more settled here.”

Lucy finally looks up and nods for her to continue.

“We can’t go crazy with it or anything, but Lucy, you and Jiya will have a chance to get out a little more here. You’re not confined to the Mine, and while I don’t recommend group outings or extended forays, there’s no reason you two can’t go grocery shopping or to get coffee every now and then.”

Garcia feels a ripple of annoyance, even if he’s glad that Lucy and Jiya will be able to see the light of the sun. “And the rest of us, Agent Christopher?”

She rolls her eyes at his pointed return to formality. “ _Mr_. Flynn, you’re wanted on terrorism charges. I’m doing what I can to collect evidence to have those charges overturned, but I have to be careful not to draw Rittenhouse’s attention. Mr. Mason is an instantly recognizable tech mogul, and Wyatt let in a civilian who betrayed us.”

When she puts it that way, what can he say?

“Now, that being said, you and Connor aren’t completely forbidden from leaving, especially if you stay out of populated areas where you might be recognized. Just check with me first, okay?” Denise continues, exasperated.

He acknowledges her command with a single nod.

“Um, that sounds great, Denise, and thank you. But...where are we?” Lucy asks.

Denise smiles. “Just outside Roslyn, Washington.”

Lucy’s eyes widen. “Roslyn? Isn’t that—are these the mines from the 1892 and 1909 explosions? Is that safe?”

“Much improved, and approved as a safe house by two government agencies, I assure you.”

Lucy’s eyes widen with that look she gets at being near history, her grin taking over her face, and his heart squeezes in his chest. She’s adorable in her passion and excitement, and he struggles not to react.

Not reacting is made more difficult when she turns to him and beams. “Did you know there’s a town called Garcia just a few miles away?”

God, he’s utterly gone for this woman, and he is  _doomed_.

&&&

They’re silent for the first few miles heading to Seattle for his appointment. He stares out at the pine trees, the beauty of the Cascades this time of year overwhelming, especially since it’s the first time since that juke joint in 1936 he’s had the chance to take in the scenery.

“How is your arm, Flynn? And your shoulder?” Denise keeps her eyes on the road.

“What, worried you’re down a soldier? Don’t worry, I’ve fought with worse,” he says, internally cursing his inability to not be snarky.

Denise does  _not_  seem impressed, but she’s difficult for him to read. She inhales deeply before continuing. “That’s not what I was asking. You’re part of the team now, no matter how that began.”

He’s quiet, stunned. Finally, he answers her, “It hurts, but it’s getting better. I’ve been trying to keep it stationary. I have had worse, but frankly, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

She glances over at him and smiles. “I know how that goes. But Dr. Weaver is good. I’ve known her since college, and I’d trust her with my children’s lives. You’ll be in good hands.”

“Thank you.”

His appointment is a qualified success—there’s no sign of infection, but he’ll need to come back next week to check on how his muscles are healing. Dr. Weaver is brusque with him, irrelevant in light of her competence. It does, however, surprise him more when she smiles flirtatiously at Denise as they leave.

He raises an eyebrow at Denise as they get back in the car, fighting off a smirk.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Flynn. She knows full well I’m happily married, and she is too.” Is Denise  _blushing_?

He laughs. “You don’t have to say anything to me, and I wasn’t implying anything. I know you love your wife.”

“Very much.” She pauses, clearly hesitant, before continuing, “Look, I don’t know if I’m stepping beyond my bounds here, so you can tell me to shut up if I am. God knows you’ve never kept your opinions about that to yourself any—”

“Denise.” He heads off her rambling. “Just say whatever it is, and we’ll go from there.”

She takes a deep, fortifying breath. “Your wife and daughter, Lorena and Iris. I’ve been thinking.”

Garcia tenses.

“I don’t know we can do about getting them back, because it seems like every trip we take and the Mothership takes makes it harder and harder to get things back to how they were. And getting Rufus back is our priority right now.”

“You think I don’t know that? That I’ve lost sight of what’s important here?” His voice is low, dangerous.

Denise shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

There’s silence in the car as they leave the city, but to his surprise, they take one of the first exits near Snoqualmie. After they stop at a fast food place, she drives them to one of the overlooks of the falls.

“I’m sorry, Flynn. I went about that all wrong,” Denise says, standing next to him but not looking at him as they peer over the lookout at the turbulent waters.

He glances over at her, sees how tense and unsure she is, and deflates, his anger draining. “I love them, Denise. I will until my dying day. And I meant what I told you, that I would give  _anything_  for three more minutes with my girl.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ there.”

Garcia sighs. “Look, even if Rufus weren’t our priority, I’m not even sure I could get them back anymore.”

Her face’s lines soften into something motherly and kind, and it’s almost more than he can bear. “It doesn’t mean we can’t try, Flynn.”

He buries his face in his hands. “But should we?” He rubs his eyes and turns to her. “I-we, we all saw what happened with Jessica getting back. I said I’d give anything, but...well, not quite anything. I know we can’t risk the team, not when we have no way of knowing if Lorena and Iris would be the Lorena and Iris they were.”

He feels a cautious hand on his bicep. “You don’t want them to be trick by Rittenhouse.”

“No.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think they would be,” Denise says with a squeeze of his arm, before releasing him and stepping back.

Garcia turns back to the falls, trying to gather his thoughts. “The problem is that if we go back and manage to save them both—which we both know now that my killing the operative who murdered them would do no good, Rittenhouse would just have sent someone else—then we don’t know what that would mean for the fight against Rittenhouse.”

She crosses her arms and nods. “Without you finding out about them and—I’m sorry, this is going to sound callous—without losing your family, would there even be a fight? You were the one that started all this, Flynn, you and Lucy.”

“All the more reason to think that if I got them both back, it would be Rittenhouse’s doing,” he says. “And Denise, if I could sacrifice myself and get them back, I would. But if the price for having Lorena and Iris back is unleashing Rittenhouse on the world?”

Denise waits for him to continue.

“I don’t know if I can pay that price anymore.”

“There’s a lot at stake,” she agrees.

He mirrors her posture, crossing his arms. “I’m not the man I was—”

Denise cuts him off. “No, Flynn, you’re not. You’ve done horrible, awful things. And you’ve helped save the world and history.”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Garcia says, “I don’t know what that makes me, but I do know that the best thing I can do for my wife and daughter now is to make Rittenhouse pay. And they will, for what they’ve done to them and to history.”

“And to Lucy,” she says slowly, as if to test his response.

He nods, hoping it’s measured and calm. “Yes.”

“You know,” she says, brow furrowed as she tries to puzzle out how to continue, what to say, “or at least do you think—that Lorena and Iris would be okay with you moving on, whenever you’re ready to do so?”

He’s not ashamed of the tears he wipes away. “Lorena would long since have smacked me over the head for not—well, she would want me to move on and find peace again, if I can.”

To his absolute stupefaction, he feels Denise’s arms wrap around him. “It’s okay to grieve. You’re not giving up on them, you’re honoring them.”

He returns her hug, a quick, fierce thing, before letting her go. “I know, I just may need reminders of that occasionally.”

Denise smiles. “I can remind you, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

Garcia remembers her earlier comment about Lucy, and he knows he’s not exactly subtle about his feelings for her, but for the first time, he wonders what Denise knows. Ah well, that can be something to worry about or be thankful for later, he decides.

They begin the short trek back to the car. It’s quiet as they had back to the Mine, but it’s a comfortable silence. Garcia is exhausted, emotionally and physically, but it’s the tiredness of a healthy workout, and the pain he feels is that of a freshly cleaned wound. He has a lot to think about.

As she parks the car off the trail that leads to the Mine, she says in a conversational tone, “Kerry—Dr. Weaver—and I used to date a little, back in college.”

He stops in his tracks, thrown off by the change in topic. “And…?”

The smile she gives him is downright mischievous. “And you’re not allowed to tell the rest of the team.”

He rolls his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Christ..”

&&&

Later that night, he sits on Lucy’s bed next to her as they watch—nominally, at least— _The Third Man_  on her laptop.

She had come to him after dinner with the shy invitation to join her for a movie. As ever, he was powerless to resist, which is how he finds himself sitting next to her, determinedly not holding her as she asks about his day.

Garcia wants to reach for her as he fills her in about the prognosis on his arm. He’s not ready yet to share his conversation with Denise; it still weighs on him, and he needs more time to think, to feel, before he can possibly talk about it with her. “Denise even took me for fast food,” he says with wink, hoping he can distract her from any deeper queries by being ridiculous.

She shakes her head and elbows his good side.

His heart speeds up, and he wants desperately to bridge the inches between them (even on a full-size bed, he takes up quite a lot of space). He knows they’re not ready for that, that there are still conversations they need to have before they can fall into each other again. Even more importantly, they both have things to figure out.

Instead, he asks what she got up to that day.

“I kept working on the histories of some of the times we’ve gone, so that at least somewhere we’ll have a record of how it was originally. I’m thinking about digitizing a couple of the books I have. It’ll just be nice, in case we ever change things too much.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You don’t think we have already?”

Lucy shrugs. “I have no idea anymore. That’s another thing we’ve been trying to figure out—how we can retain memories of the older timeline if one of us isn’t on a particular mission.”

Intriguing. “How would that work?”

“None of us are sure yet, though Jiya has an idea. She and Connor have been fixing and upgrading the Lifeboat with the plans that other Lucy and Wyatt left.”

“Maybe we can steal another nuclear bomb to power the Lifeboat,” Garcia teases.

She gives him a quelling look. “Only one of us here has stolen nuclear weapons, Flynn, and he’s tall, Croatian, and annoying.” The twinkle in her eye softens the last word.

It would be easy to keep talking, flirting, acting as though everything were completely unchanged from two weeks ago. But she’s Lucy, and he can’t stand to not tell her anything of today’s emotional catharsis and the realizations from talking things through with their boss...their friend. “Denise and I talked on the way back,” he says after taking a breath to gather his courage.

She sets down the laptop and turns on her side to face him, completely giving up any pretense of watching the movie now. “Oh? What about?” She reaches a hand toward him, but drops it onto the blanket halfway between them.

Garcia mulls over his response, biting his bottom lip.

Lucy’s eyes follow the motion, darkening when he runs his tongue over them.

_Down, boy. Now isn’t the time_ , he warns himself. He contents himself with turning onto his own side and laying his hand over hers. “Honestly, I’m not ready to talk about all of it, but...we talked about Lorena and Iris.”

“Hmm,” she says, and he wishes he could know what she’s thinking. She covers his hand with her other and runs her thumb across his knuckles. “And how was that?”

She isn’t meeting his gaze, but she is holding his hand. He runs his eyes over the graceful planes of her face, and he desperately wants to kiss her, the smooth, pale skin of her cheeks, the corner of lip. God, Lucy gives her attention and concern so readily, even to a damaged and broken man like him.

Clearing his throat, he says, “Good, I think. It helped to talk about them.”

“You can talk about them with me, you know. That hasn’t changed,” she says. Her thumb ceases its light caress.

He squeezes her hand. “No? I’m glad of it.”

She finally looks up at him, and Garcia smiles at her as she bites her lip. “From everything you’ve told me, Lorena was an impressive and intimidating woman. So occasionally I’m intimidated, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about her. And Iris…”

“Iris was my everything,” he says, taking the opening she gives him. “A sweet and trusting girl, so curious and intelligent. In that, she reminds me of another impressive woman I’ve gotten to know recently.”

Lucy’s answering smile is watery but brilliant, and she brings his hand to her lips, pressing a fervent kiss to it.

After this, they sit up and pull the laptop back, but their hands remain entwined. For the rest of his days, Garcia doesn’t remember what they actually watch, and it’s with great reluctance that he goes to his own room at the movie’s end.

&&&

It’s two weeks later after another appointment with Dr. Weaver when Garcia broaches the topic with Denise. It’s not exactly a habit, their stopping for food and then a chat at one of the parks afterwards, but it could become one.

He sits on the bench fiddling with the wrapper for his burger, wondering how to begin. Denise isn’t an idiot; she can tell there’s something on his mind, and she waits patiently.

“I can’t go back to my wife’s and daughter’s graves, not while Rittenhouse exists,” he says.

There’s no preamble or lead-up to his statement, and her brow furrows. She motions for him to continue.

“With Emma being my pilot the last time I went, she knows where they’re buried. And I won’t risk making the assumption she hasn’t told anyone else.”

The comprehension and compassion in her eyes overwhelm him, so he looks away. “I can’t imagine not being able to go to my father’s grave, especially when his loss was new.”

Garcia nods, searching for words. “I know I need to let go of them, of getting them back. I’ve lived with the denial of them being gone for too long, but it’s hard to move past that.”

“You need something solid and tangible,” she says.

He could almost cry from the relief of being understood. “Yes, I do. Someplace I can go to mourn, to honor them.”

She pats his arm. “We can probably work something out. What would you need?”

“I can make a list. And when I was walking a few days ago, I found a spot in the woods that I’d like to use.”

“Let me know where it is, and I can help you,” Denise says.

He hesitates. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to do this by myself. I’ll show you where, I just…”

She gives him a considering look, then nods.

Garcia looks down at his hands and thumbs at his ring. “Actually, there is something I need your help with, if you’re willing.”

&&&

It’s another couple of weeks before he completes the stone markers, as he had definitely underestimated the strength it would take from his healing arm to be able to carve stone. He’s healing well, though not nearly as quickly as he would have a decade prior.

But at last, he’s ready. Garcia walks up the trail until it forks, following it into a piney copse, Denise at his heels. She won’t stay long, she says, but it’s not the worst thing for there to be two people remembering Lorena and Iris.

The rose bush he planted a week ago is doing well. Even with its lack of blooms, it reminds him of the ones outside his and Lorena’s old home in Dubrovnik. He kneels down, places the carved stone at the base of the bush.

_Lorena and Iris_

_Gone but not forgotten_

It’s simple, almost more simple than he’d like. But he’s no craftsman, and he’s sensible of the danger of adding more information that Rittenhouse could use. Even a well-meaning hiker could cause problems, if they were curious enough to look for more information, so it’s best to leave it as it is.

Denise’s hand comes down to grip his shoulder, and he reaches up to squeeze her hand for a moment. Lucy should be here, but he’s not quite ready to share this with her yet. He still has something to do.

“Do you have the chain I asked for?”

Denise kneels beside him and reaches into her bag before handing over the small jeweler’s box.

Garcia swallows the lump in his throat. From the mark on the box, this is obviously well-made, expensive. It’s too much.

She seems to realize how overwhelmed he is, and she takes pity on him. “Just open it, Flynn. I made sure it’s a good, strong metal that’ll hold up through things like, oh, traveling through time.”

“Thank you,” he whispers, and does as she instructed. There it is, the chain necklace he requested. Then it catches his eye—a miniature dog tag, understated and elegant. He looks at Denise, an eyebrow raised in question.

“Read it,” she urges, half a smile on her lips.

Engraved on the tag are Lorena’s and Iris’ names, the too-short years they lived, and the coordinates for this exact place.

“So no one can forget,” Denise says. She pauses, then continues, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

He smiles and nods, unhooking the clasp of the chain. “I do, Denise. This isn’t only for me,” he says. It’s as close as he’s come to bringing up whatever lies between him and Lucy with her, and his smile falters as he reaches down and twists his wedding band off his finger. He loops it onto the chain.

Denise wordlessly offers to help him put it on, and he allows her this small, motherly act of comfort. She pulls herself to her feet and pats his shoulder. “I’ll let you be now.”

He nods at her as she heads back to the trail, back to the apartment she hopes to share with Michelle and their children.

Finally, he’s alone. Reaching for where the ring and tag swing over his chest, he squeezes them. He runs his right hand over the stone carving of Lorena’s and Iris’ names, wincing at the lingering twinge of pain at the movement.

“Goodbye, my loves.” Then Garcia Flynn, assassin and alleged terrorist, buries his face in his hands and weeps.

&&&

Flynn sneaks back into the Mine that evening, eyes red. He’s drained and feels curiously empty. He makes his way through the tunnels that hide their home, punches in the access code Denise gave him for the door, and heads to the kitchen. It’s the height of summer, but he’s cold, a damp chill following him. He needs coffee.

Wyatt trails in after him, just moments after he’s started the coffeemaker.

Garcia sighs internally. They’ve done a good job of avoiding each other, but apparently Wyatt is in one of his confrontational moods.

“Where the hell were you?” Wyatt asks, and Garcia prays for the patience to avoid a fight. He can’t do it, not today.

He turns slowly to face him. “Does it matter?” He resists the urge to wisecrack about sounding like a jealous wife, instead focusing on keeping his voice level.

Wyatt is not impressed. “Of fucking course it does! You’re probably betraying our secrets to some Rittenhouse asshole, and I’m cooped up in here—” He cuts himself off, chest heaving with his fury.

_Jebi ga_. If Wyatt is so determined to fight, he’ll give that to him. “I don’t know why the hell you think I’d suddenly betray you all to Rittenhouse. They still killed my family, have hurt people I love—”

“You’re not capable of love, Flynn. You’re a terrorist and a traitor.”

It’s a low blow, and one that hurts as it hits. Garcia shrugs, attempting casual, even if he’s painfully aware his love is never, ever enough. “Terrorism doesn’t preclude love, Logan. And one might argue that we’re all terrorists here.”

“Then we sure as hell don’t need you here!” Christ, must the man yell like that?

Jiya, Lucy, and Mason file into the kitchen, drawn by Wyatt’s raised voice.

Wyatt stares at him, still breathing heavily.

Garcia sighs again—externally this time—and silently begs the others to intervene. He’s  _tired_ , so tired of dealing with Wyatt’s misdirected anger and hurt.

“We don’t,” Wyatt says, anger making his voice brittle.

Lucy steps forward. “We don’t what, Wyatt?” Her question is a knife, and he thanks whatever higher power that’s up there that it’s not directed at him.

Wyatt doesn’t know when to stop, though. “We don’t need him, Lucy. He’s a threat to our security, and what fucking good is he anyway?” He points at himself and continues, “We already have a soldier, and he’s not doing anything with that shoulder. Other than sneaking out and doing god knows what.”

Garcia can feel the the color drain from him, any desire to engage in this...gone. Wyatt’s right in that, at least. What good  _is_  he? What’s he done for the past few weeks, other than mourn and deal with his injuries? He couldn’t save Lorena and Iris, he’s of no use to the team—

He needs to leave, now. He hurries past them all, intent on fleeing to his room.

Lucy reaches for him when he’s in the doorway, her hand on his gentle but firm. “Flynn, it’s not true, please, just…” Her whisper trail off, and he knows the moment she realizes he no longer wears his wedding ring.  

Her eyes widen, and she clutches at him tighter. Everyone else fades away, but it’s still too much to handle right now. “Please, Lucy. I just...I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

She nods and lets him extract his hand from hers, and he all but runs away. He can hear low murmurs from the kitchen, but it blissfully fades away when he shuts the door to his room behind him.

His knees give out beneath him, and he sinks to the floor. Leaning against the door, he can feel a sob rising in his throat. He lets himself cry, and it might be hours or minutes before a quiet knock sounds against the metal of his door.

Garcia stills, clears his throat. “Who is it?” It comes out a croak, and he grimaces.

“It’s me,” Lucy’s voice says. “Can I come in?”

He pauses. He’s not sure he’s ready for this inevitable conversation, especially when he’s raw and bare as he is. But then again, she’s  _Lucy_ , and she’s let herself be vulnerable and open with him, even when he didn’t deserve it.

Standing to his feet, he swallows and opens the door for her. She comes in without a word, says nothing as he closes the door behind her.

Lucy peers around the room. It’s the first time she’s been in here, all the time they’ve spent together here happening in the common areas or in her room. She takes in the sparse furnishings, the giant bed (he’d gleefully reassembled the frames for the two extra-long twin beds and pushed them together, relieved to finally have a bed that fit his entire body), the books on the nightstand the lone concession to a personal touch.

She looks up at him,  _sees_  him, sees how broken he is, and she doesn’t turn away. His lip trembles, and he wills further tears away. It’s not the first time she’s seen him cry, but how can he be strong for her if he keeps breaking down?

She cranes her head up, biting her lip. Whatever she sees in him seems to make some sort of decision for her, because she nods to herself and throws her arms around his waist.

The force of it pushes him back a few inches, and he flails, unsure of what to do. Her arms tighten around him, and finally Garcia slumps into her embrace, encircles her in his arms.

They stand there together for a long while. Eventually, she steps back, and he drops his arms. She’s still clutching his shirt in her hand, and she tugs him toward the bed. Lucy crawls over to the far side of the bed, pats the space in front of her. “I’ll be the big spoon. I think you need it.”

God, he loves her. Loves the way she stormed into his room, his life, told him what to do, and did it all with a hug and unflagging support.

Garcia laughs and obeys. He kicks his shoes off and climbs into bed, her arm coming across his waist, her hand resting over his chest. The comfort of her warmth behind him, her slight curves pressed up against him, and the gentle pressure of her lips against his shoulder blade through his shirt drain the tension from him.

They lie there until he’s calm. He could almost convince himself she’s asleep but for the way she continues to trace soothing circles on his chest.

He reaches for her hand, gives it a quick squeeze before releasing it.

Lucy wiggles further up the bed, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. “This might be a stupid question, but how are you?”

He snorts. Today is a roller coaster, and he aches, for Lorena, for Iris, for his own useless self. But in the circle of her arms, he feels an ember of  _something_  burning. It flickers, but grows stronger, and he smiles as he sees one of the books on the bedside table. “Mmm, half agony, half hope?”

She stills against him, and he worries he’s said something wrong. Then her breath tickles his ear as she laughs, and he relaxes. “I’d make a joke about  _Emma_ , but that’s been kind of ruined for us now, hasn’t it?”

“A little bit,” he says, the laughter rumbling through him.

Lucy continues to trace nonsensical patterns over his shirt. “You took off your ring.”

Well, he supposes it’s time, though his heart quakes at the prospect of frightening her off with the depth of all he feels. “I did.”

She doesn’t say anything, and he clears his throat before continuing. “It...it was time.”

“Why? I thought you—you told me we should still have hope of getting back the people we love.”

Ah. “And you gave away your locket anyway,” Garcia reminds her.

“But I still have the pictures, Flynn.” He smiles at the scolding in her voice.

“I didn’t get rid of my ring, Lucy,” he says, taking her hand and guiding it to the necklace. Her finger close around it and the engraved dog tag. She draws back her hand, lets it fall into his. “I love Lorena and Iris, but I need to let go.”

He tells her everything he’s told Denise over the last few weeks, tells her of the memorial stone under a rose bush in the woods, and tells her of Denise’s gift.

When he’s done talking, she hugs him tight. Her voice shakes as she tells him, “Emma erased Amy. Apparently, she took a bunch of trips to make sure she’ll never exist again.”

Oh, god. His heart aches for her, and he turns around and pulls her close, heedless of any pain in his arm or shoulder. “I’m so sorry,  _draga_.”

“You never have told me what that means,” she mutters against his chest.

Garcia smiles.

Lucy props herself up, looks down at him. “I just...does this mean we’ve lost? I mean, we’ll keep fighting, because it’s right, but if we lose the reasons we started, can we have any kind of victory?”

His smile fades as he ponders her question. Each and every one of them (except Denise, and he prays that she’ll be spared) has lost they reason they began fighting Rittenhouse. He reaches up to trace her cheek with his thumb, and she leans into his palm. “I think...there are new reasons to fight, for all of us. I hope.”

He looks into the whiskey and honey of her eyes until they soften. “A new hope, huh? Rufus would love that.”

“He  _will_ , we’ll tell him as soon as we get him back.”

She smiles and kisses his palm. “What's your new hope?”

“Lucy…” he pleads, silently begging her to understand. God, if he tells her and it’s too much, what will he have left?

She faces him, and the uncertaintly there confounds him. How can she not know?

Taking a deep breath, he says, “Don’t you know?” He’s not good with words in spite of the many languages he speaks, and part of him would willingly give up his right arm’s use entirely to not have this conversation, but if there’s even the slightest chance this gives  _her_ hope?

She’s quiet as takes him in, and god, he must look a mess. He brings her hand to his lips, kisses her knuckles.

It seems to click for her as she glances at the pale line where his wedding ring used to sit. “...oh,” she says, and the surprise in her voice fills him with dread.

Nonetheless, Garcia swallows his nervousness, and asks, “Is that a problem? Because if it is, I’ll not say or do anything else.”

That stunned look on her face fades into something softer, more fond, and the tightness in chest loosens.

Lucy laces fingers through his, and lips turn up in a small smile. “It’s not a problem.”

He sighs with relief.

“I—I’m not sure what it means yet, and we have so much to do, with getting Rufus back and—”

He very nearly cuts her off with a kiss, now that he knows she’s not opposed to it. Instead, he contents himself remind her of what he told her in the bunker almost two months before, “We can see happens, eh?”

So perhaps it really is two steps forward and one step back, but Garcia finds himself grateful beyond measure for that rare giant leap.

The Lucy kisses him, and he stops worrying entirely.


	4. let me in the walls you built around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smut returns, plans are hatched, and Lucy has a long overdue conversation.

Lucy wakes to a large, empty bed. Flynn’s side is still warm when she reaches for it, so she knows he hasn’t been gone long.

Where is he? Is everything okay? She wracks her brain for something that could have happened to drive him away, to change his mind. For god’s sake, he’d all but told her he loved her. They’d talked, they’d made out, and finally, she’d gone to the kitchen and gotten them food. There wasn’t any question of them doing anything more; it had been far too exhausting of a day to think about sex. Instead, she’d fallen asleep in his arms, secure in his embrace.

So where the hell is he now? Lucy sits up and rubs her eyes, tries to—

—Flynn enters the room, blissfully cutting off her panic spiral.  _Oh_. He comes in carrying two mugs of coffee, a loaf of bread tucked under his arm. His smile at her is a trifle uncertain, but it melts away all her anxiety about things between them. “Morning.”

His shoulders relax as he sets their coffee on the bedside table and tosses the bread toward the foot of the bed. “Good morning, Lucy,” he says, brushing his lips across hers in greeting. He pulls back before she can deepen it, but perhaps it’s for the best.

They have coffee, after all. “The bread is breakfast, I assume?”

“I thought it better than trying to juggle the cereal and milk.” He raises an eyebrow at her.

She tilts her head to the side. “And heaven forbid you make us eggs for breakfast or anything like that.”

“ _Someone_  is demanding this morning,” he says, dropping onto the bed next to her and pulling her onto his lap.

She tries to fight off a grin, but she’s clearly not entirely successful, judging by how delighted Flynn looks. She wraps her arms around his neck, and nuzzles his neck. “Oh, you have no idea.”

It’s her turn to be delighted at the way he shivers. “I take it that this is okay, then?” he asks with apparently monumental effort. He pulls back to await her answer, eyes dark with desire. There’s something about the twist of his mouth, though, that speaks to his nervousness about her response.

Lucy softens and presses a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth. “More than okay, really,” she says.

“Ah, good,” he says, not quite meeting her eyes as he continues, “I’d hate to think my behavior isn’t satisfactory.”

Oh my god, is  _that_  what he’s worried about? She slides off his lap and reaches for her coffee, taking a long sip as she contemplates how to answer him.

He drinks his coffee as well. She slides her hand over the blanket to rest on his thigh while she thinks. “I can think of several ways your behavior has been satisfactory.”

Flynn sputters, coughing as he chokes on his coffee.

She bites her lip, trying not to laugh. He sets down his now-empty mug and takes her hand, and she’s relieved to see him smiling at her. God, he looks so  _light_  and  _free_ , even more than he did after the first night she slept in his bed.

Still, Lucy can’t resist teasing him. She fights a giggle and says, “One might even say that you were a gentle and responsive lover.”

He covers his face with his other hand, and she can see his cheeks turning pink. She has no idea how someone who’s such a force of nature can be so insecure, but god, he’s adorable and just...absurdly attractive. She squeezes the hand holding hers.

She gets a flash of his dimples as he laughs and releases her hand, and it sends a pang of desire through her. “Well, I’m glad that you were satisfied—”

“Oh, definitely,” she interrupts.

He gives her a quelling look that’s somehow still smug. Lucy doesn’t know how that turns her on, but it does. “As I was saying, glad as I am that you were satisfied, given my injury, I don’t think it was my best work.”

Jesus, he’s going to be the death of her and she’s not mad about it. “So are you saying you could do better, then?”

He toys with the end of one of her curls and leans close. “I am.”

“Prove it,” she whispers.

Flynn smiles at her, and she shivers at the predatory glint in his eye. Lucy leans back onto the pillows, watching as he lowers himself over her. He braces himself over her, and while she knows his arm and shoulder are much better, it still can’t be comfortable. And she can’t stand for him to not be  _comfortable_.

She grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulls him onto her. He crashes onto her with an “ooph!,” and she’s breathless—not just because of his weight on her, but because he’s kissing her, and it’s so good, it’s everything—

Lucy moans against his lips, relishing the the feel of his body over hers. Flynn’s leg slides between hers as she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, loses herself in the bliss that is his tongue moving against hers, his hand slipping under her sweatshirt.

His calloused palms skim over her side. She shudders at the pleasure of the rough scrape of his hands against her and bucks against him. Flynn stills completely for a moment. She looks up at him, sees how dazed he is, his lips swollen from kissing her. God, he’s so visibly _affected_  by her, by everything that she is. She can’t bear it, the sheer want for him, for them, and she grinds against him.

He’s hard against her now. She can feel him through the layers of fabric between them, and she wants. He makes a helpless sound as she pushes him back to tear her shirt off. Then she’s rendered helpless when he licks his lips, nods in apparent determination, and tugs her underwear down her legs, finally flinging them onto the floor.

Lucy is bare before him. For a moment, she’s conscious of every perceived shortcoming—too small, too much cellulite, lacking the curves she saw in that one picture of Lorena—but he can’t take his eyes off her, and she can only describe his expression as  _worshipful_.

She loves it, she really does, but doesn’t want pedestals or hymns, she wants flesh and blood. She wants  _him_. “Flynn…”

A benediction, she later thinks, is how he accepts his name on her tongue. He presses between her spread thighs, the heavy weight of him both a comfort and a flame.

Kissing him consumes her. His mouth, his tongue, are everything to her. She wants to feel his skin against hers, but she contents herself with the way he touches her. And he touches her everywhere—it drives her crazy, the way she can’t predict where his fingers will brush next.

She arches against him, wanting to feel him move against her. He does, groaning into their kiss. Then, as always, he does the unexpected, pulling back from her lips. He presses open-mouthed kisses down her neck, and she keens as his teeth scrape against her collarbone.

She writhes against him, intent on finding relief. Lucy gasps when he takes one nipple into his mouth at the same time as one of his hands slips over her mound. She has to bite her lip to keep from crying out when his thumb rubs over her clit.

Flynn looks up at her, his eyes darker than she’s ever seen them. He moves away from her breasts only to nip his way down her stomach, laving his tongue over each small hurt.

She can hear heart pounding in her ears. She’s already wet, ready for him. She  _needs_  him, now.

Lucy looks down to where he’s brushing his lips across the crease of her thighs. He meets her eyes as he slides a finger through her folds easily. She watches him inhale, close his eyes, and rest his cheek against her. Her heart swells with more than just desire as she tangles her fingers in his dark hair.

“Lucy,” he whispers, voice hoarse and wrecked, “please.”

She isn’t sure what he’s asking for, but whatever it is, her answer is yes. She nods.

He doesn’t waste time teasing her, closing his mouth over her clit as he presses his finger into her.

Oh.  _Oh_. He licks at her, curls his finger inside her with every thrust, and it’s almost too much. But it’s perfect, and she tightens her grip on his hair.

Flynn moans into her at one particularly sharp tug, and she decides to file that away for later. He slips another finger inside her, fucking her in earnest now, and she bucks against his mouth.

She watches breathlessly as he throws one of her legs over his shoulder. God, he’s rutting into the mattress, and the sight of how affected he is by going down on her threatens to undo her. Lucy places a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

She’s close, so close, his tongue and hands bringing her nearer to ecstacy. She can feel herself reaching the precipice, vision narrowing, and she gasps his name—

There’s a loud knock at the door. “Uh, guys? I mean, Flynn?” Jiya’s voice is like being splashed with cold water, and Lucy nearly groans in frustration. Flynn doesn’t look any more pleased at the interruption, fingers still inside her. He stays silent, jaw clenched, but ceases his movement.

Jiya continues, “Um, we’re about to have a meeting in the lounge. So, uh, yeah. If you could find Lucy too and let her know, that would be great.”

“Okay,” he says, a strangled, pained response. Jiya clearly knows they’re in here together and has some inkling of what they were doing, but it’s clearly killing him to have to stop. She knows how he feels.

She whines when he pulls his fingers from her. He gives her a small, quick smile. “Sorry,  _draga_.”

Lucy sighs. “There’s nothing you have to be sorry for, I just kind of hate Denise right now. And Jiya, by proxy.”

He pulls himself off the bed and reaches for her hand, helping her to her feet. He bends his head down and kisses her once more, and she can taste herself on his tongue. It’s all she can do to keep from begging him to finish what they’ve started, but god, they don’t have  _time_.

She stays in his embrace a moment longer, reluctant to head out to meet the next crisis. Lucy knows they have to go out there, but...she doesn’t want to, not now. Reaching down between them, she palms him through the pajama pants they never got around to removing. She strokes him once, squeezing his still-hard length lightly before stepping back and smiling up at him.

Flynn grunts, closing his eyes. “Dammit, Lucy.”

She gathers her clothes and throws them on. With a peck on his cheek and one last lingering look at where Flynn is standing still as a statue, she leaves for the meeting.

&&&

Lucy slips onto the couch next to Jiya, ignoring her smirk. Denise stands across the room, arms folded across her chest. She raises an eyebrow at Lucy and seems on the verge of saying something, but she cuts herself off with a shake of her head. Wyatt leans against the wall off to one side of the room, not looking at any of them. Connor sits in a chair, fidgeting with his watch.

Flynn is the only absent one, but it takes just a couple more minutes for him to appear. He’s changed into jeans and one of his ubiquitous turtlenecks, and he looks remarkably put-together. As he slides into the space next to her, he rests his arm along the back of the couch behind her, and she can see the effort he puts into not draping it over her shoulder.

He drags his gaze over her, the pleased (and smug) set of his lips making heat rise in her cheeks. She starts to realize the reason for the oblique looks and smirks—she didn’t stop to smooth her hair, it has to be terribly mussed, and she looks down to see that her shirt is inside out. She sighs, hoping her robe covers it, at least.

“Thank you for joining us, Flynn,” Denise says. “Now that we’re all here, let’s get started.” Lucy is mildly horrified to see that her boss seems to be fighting a smile.

“About time,” Wyatt says, and she grimaces at the obstinate set of his jaw.

Denise shoots a look at him, but continues, “Anyway, we have a lot to go over. Connor and Jiya have let me know that the Lifeboat has been fixed and its software upgraded. It’s time to save Rufus.”

“Using the plans that your future counterparts left,” Connor says, gesturing to Lucy and Wyatt, “we were able to work in an upgrade allowing us to visit places or times we already existed. However, it doesn’t seem advisable to linger there, so we should make any trips to the past as brief and infrequent as possible.”

Denise nods. “Just so. We’ve been fortunate to have had this reprieve without Rittenhouse taking out the Mothership, but we can’t count on that to continue. Time is of the essence, and we need to act now.”

“Why hasn’t Rittenhouse done anything, anyway? Not like I don’t appreciate it, but…” Jiya trails of with a shrug.

Flynn cocks his head to the side. “Consolidation of power. That would be my best guess.”

Lucy worries about how much his intelligence turns her on, as this is obviously not the time or place for it. “Yeah. I mean, Emma killed the two ranking members of Rittenhouse and is in charge now, but there has to be some dissent in the ranks.”

“It’s smart to take that time,” Wyatt says through his teeth, as though agreeing with Flynn deeply pains him.

“Exactly. While we were able to flush out a lot of Rittenhouse members last year, we know there are more out there. So there are undoubtedly at least a few powerful people Emma has to placate before she can move on to whatever’s next on her agenda,” Denise says.

Jiya nods, accepting the explanation. “Okay, so how do we get Rufus back?”

“We go back and save his life. Lucy and Wyatt—the ones from the future—talked with us about some of the medical advances from their time, and fortunately, a lot of the technology exists already, even if it isn’t in common practice yet.”

“Just so, Denise,” Connor says, “and I looked into spider silk, as they suggested. And not only should it work for our medical purposes, but it also has a variety of applications we could use with the Lifebo—”

“Later, Connor,” Denise says, exasperated at the tangent. “First things first, saving Rufus. Then maybe later we can explore the various technological applications for it.”

He looks suitably cowed, but gestures for Denise to continue.

“Anyway, in addition to acquiring the spider silk, none of us are surgeons, which we will need even with that silk. And the number of surgeons working with spider silk are fairly limited,” she says.

“So what do we do?” Lucy asks.

Denise grimaces. “You’re not going to like this, Lucy.”

Well, that’s...ominous.

“I did some research into surgeons who have been working with spider silk, as it’s not exactly common yet. I actually recognized one name on the list, and we know he’s not Rittenhouse. He’s already helped us out before,” she says.

Comprehension dawns. “Noah.”

Flynn looks at her, eyebrow raised in confusion (she’s told him so much, but somehow has neglected to tell him about her temporary sort-of fiance).

“Are we sure he’s not Rittenhouse?” Wyatt asks. His muttered curse when it was clear that Denise did in fact mean Noah pretty well encapsulates how Lucy feels, too.

Denise says, “I am. Since he and Lucy, er, parted ways, he hasn’t had any contact with anyone from Rittenhouse or even anyone new.”

“A former boyfriend?” Flynn asks Lucy, an amused smirk on his lips.

“Ex fiance, actually,” she says before elaborating further with a wave of her hand, “from the vagaries of time travel.”

“Ah,” he says, and she so wishes she could hold his hand, but she doesn’t want to deal with the inevitable fallout from that, not yet. Not when they have the biggest mission of their lives ahead of them.

Lucy runs her hands through her hair. “So how do we do this?”

“Well, there’s a university not far from here that has a lab that specializes in spider silk, and Lucy, I think you’re the best one to get it. Of all of us, you have the most familiarity with academic settings,” Denise says.

“We can’t requisition it from the government?”

Denise shakes her head. “I think that would probably lead to more questions than we need. It’ll be easier to just grab it.”

Lucy sighs. “Okay, fine.”

“We’ll go in the Lifeboat, so then we can go straight from there to pick up Dr. Caldwell. So, Jiya, Lucy, and I will do that,” Denise says.

“No muscle needed?” Wyatt asks, glancing at Flynn out of the corner of his eye.

“No, not for this. The university shouldn’t present any problems for Lucy, and if it does, she’ll need help getting out of it, which is where I come in. And if for some reason we need to, er,  _convince_  Noah to help us, Jiya and I are more than capable,” Denise says. “Connor, of course, will be running point on the this end, making sure things stay on track with the Lifeboat.”

“Then I assume we’ll be discussing our imminent plan for getting Rufus, at which point Wyatt and I will have tasks?” Flynn asks in that dry, caustic way he affects when he’s uncertain.

Denis winces. “I’m sorry, Flynn, but Kerry—Dr. Weaver—hasn’t signed off on you returning to duty yet, at least not completely. So assuming nothing goes horribly awry, tomorrow Jiya, Wyatt, and Dr. Caldwell will go retrieve Rufus.”

Lucy feels Flynn tense next to her. “So I don’t have a role in this?”

“Dammit, Flynn, your only task is to get better!” Denise snaps.

His jaw clenches and he does that one, single nod. Lucy can’t help it; she reaches to touch his arm, to provide comfort. He pulls away from her, and she drops her eyes to her lap.

Denise sighs and bites her lip before continuing, “Now, as far as saving Rufus goes, it’ll be the team I just mentioned. We do need to make sure that other than saving Rufus, we change as little as possible. That being said, Wyatt, if you have a clear shot at Emma, take it.”

He nods at her.

Connor clears his throat. “Ah, yes. Well, we all know how important is to preserve our memories of what happened in Chinatown, its effects and whatnot. Jiya agrees it’s worth trying—” she nods to show her agreement— “so I’ve theorized a potential workaround. I’m not sure about its efficacy for missions other than this one, and it’s untested, but—”

“Oh, for the love, just spit it out, Connor,” Wyatt growls.

Connor rolls his eyes. “Anyway, it’s important that the person have traveled or is in transit to the past when said change is made, yes? But we know that artifacts or items left in the Lifeboat help us retain our memories of the past. So, theoretically, the Lifeboat itself, as the vehicle for time travel, would itself help us to do so.”

They all stare at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue. Connor sighs before proceeding. “As you all know, Jiya and I have, with Mr. Flynn’s help, fixed and upgraded the Lifeboat. Which is excellent, but it also means that there are parts of the Lifeboat that needed to be replaced. Instead of throwing away the obsolete or damaged parts, we’ve held onto them.”

Lucy thinks she understands, but she wants it to be made expressly clear. “So, what, if we...literally hold onto one of these spare parts, we’ll be able to remember the past?”

“Essentially, yes. Jiya and I have made sure that said parts—mostly wires and the like—are easily wearable as necklaces or bracelets.”

Flynn tilts his head to the side before agreeing. “I can’t fault the logic, though yes, it would only work for any changes made to the timeline through that mission.”

“Which is all we need for now,” Denise says. “Then are we all agreed?”

All of them nod at her.

“Let’s get to work.”

&&&

Getting the spider silk is almost too easy; Lucy has forgotten how delighted and surprised grad students are when someone outside their lab or field of study actually shows an interest in their research.

Jiya slips in and takes two containers of the medical- and military-grade spider silk while Lucy distracts the hapless Ph.D. student in the lab. She hopes he doesn’t get into too much trouble, but it sounds like the higher yields they’ve been working on at this institution mean it might not even be noticed, at least for a while.

From there, Lucy, Jiya, and Denise head take the Lifeboat to Oakland. Green tinge to her face notwithstanding, Denise is handling her first trip in the Lifeboat well, though Lucy is privately glad they’re only doing short jumps.

They don’t wait long for Noah to emerge from the hospital after his shift. Lucy shifts back and forth on her feet as she stands next to his car, Jiya and Denise just a few feet away in case she’s unable to persuade Noah to come with them.

He stops in his tracks when he spots her, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Hey,” she calls out. She internally curses.  _Hey_? She’s not sure about the protocol for greeting your ex fiance that you only have a few memories of, but she’s pretty sure that’s not the best.

Noah sighs. “Lucy.”

“How’s it going?” Oh god, this is not going well.

“Great, great,” he says, exasperated. “At least, you know, until my ex who suddenly dumped me and who I haven’t seen or heard from in months approached me in a dimly lit parking garage.”

She winces. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be creepy about it.”

“What do you want, Lucy?”

Well, then. Straight to the point. “Um, do you remember my friend Rufus? The one you stitched up?”

“Yes, I absolutely do remember the guy whose gunshot wound you had me patch up in a warehouse,” he says with a roll of his eyes.

She bites her lip. “He’s—he needs help again. This time it’s more serious.”

“Then take him to a hospital! That’s what he needs anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Noah, but that’s not an option. He needs a surgeon, and I know you’re one of the best—”

He puts a hand up, interrupting her. “Look, thanks for the flattery, but I just—look, Lucy, it’s been hard work rebuilding my life after you left, but it’s going well. My career is going nicely, and I even have a girlfriend. One of the other doctors, Eve Fuentes? You may remember her. Or not, since your memory seems to have completely failed when it comes to me.”

This isn’t going well at all. Guilt stirs in her chest and she’s wondering how she can turn this around and maybe apologize when Denise steps into view. She sighs with relief.

Denise strides toward them, extending a hand for him to shake. “Dr. Caldwell? I’m Denise Christopher, Lucy’s boss. I’m with the Department for Homeland Security.”

He shakes her hand politely, though he tenses. “DHS? You—Lucy’s a history professor.”

“She is, and an excellent one. While I can’t completely fill you in on what we’re doing, I can assure you Lucy is completely correct and approaching you out of necessity, not to upset your life.” Denise shows him her badge, and his shoulders relax.

“That’s great, Agent Christopher, but I still have my responsibilities and life here,” he responds.

Denise takes a deep breath. “Look, this mission will give you the opportunity to work more with spider silk, which I know is something you’ve been looking into. You’ll be well-compensated.”

“How did you know about my work with spider silk? Is the government actually spying on its private citizens now?” Noah is incredulous, and Lucy has to fight a hysterical laugh.

“It’s not exactly common within the medical field yet, and we actually found you because of your work with it and a couple of conference lists. I can and will provide whatever the hospital needs to release you for a short period,” she says, and Lucy has to admire how calm and collected she remains.

Noah stands still, considering. “Do I actually have a choice?” When he gets no response, he sighs and continues. “Okay, fine. I’m coming. Can I say anything to Eve, or…?”

“The less you say to anyone, the better. You can tell her that it was a sudden, classified government trip, though. I’ll provide you with the confidentiality documents you need to sign.”

He signs the paperwork, eyebrows raised at some of the clauses (Lucy isn’t surprised to see his bemusement at being unable to talk about the nature of their transportation, but he’ll learn why soon enough). Denise accompanies him to retrieve some of the surgical items he anticipates they’ll need, based on Jiya’s description. If Noah is confused about the degree of injury they seem to be expecting Rufus to have, he doesn’t show it.

He gasps when they climb into the Lifeboat. Lucy well remembers her own first trip, but she prays he doesn’t ask too many questions (or come to too many conclusions—he’s a smart guy). He clearly has them, though, especially with how quickly they arrive at their apparent destination. They make it back to the Mine a little before they normally have dinner.

Noah’s eyes widen as they emerge and he takes in what is very obviously a secret government facility, and he flat out stares when Connor approaches them. “You—you’re Connor Mason!”

Connor merely shrugs. “So I am.”

Wyatt and Flynn file in. Wyatt nods at Noah, while Flynn ignores him, staring at Lucy.

Lucy wants to throw herself into Flynn’s arms, but she’s wary after he brushed her aside earlier. He smiles at her, though, a tired, small thing, but it’s enough. She doesn’t run, but she makes her way over to him and takes his hands. Everyone else is busy or preoccupied enough not to notice, and she takes a moment to enjoy the way his large, rough hands feel enveloping hers.

It’s cut short by Denise’s instructions. “Okay, people, we have a lot to do before tomorrow morning. Wyatt, I need to speak to you. Flynn, Jiya, please show Dr. Caldwell the infirmary and make notes of anything else he’ll need. Connor, Lucy, please make sure there’s dinner and a place for Dr. Caldwell to sleep. And after I’m done speaking to Wyatt, I’ll need to speak to you as well, Flynn.

Lucy and Flynn, exchange puzzled and worried glances. With one last squeeze of her hand, he releases her and heads to accompany Jiya and Noah to the infirmary. Lucy turns to walk with Connor, who merely shrugs at her.

“Well, Noah—Dr. Caldwell—can stay in my room. I’ll bunk...elsewhere,” she says, trailing off awkwardly. She has options, but she really doesn’t feel like discussing her choice of sleeping partners with Connor, if he’s so inclined.

He nods. “Very well. Now, surely we have something quick we can throw together for a meal. I’m not particularly proficient in the kitchen.”

Lucy snorts. “I’m not either, but I’m sure we can find something that doesn’t involve us burning down the safe house.”

They do indeed eventually find something they can put together with minimal cooking. It’s not the most inspired meal they’ve eaten since the formation of the Time Team, but it’ll do. No one is particularly focused on food anyway, not on the eve of their attempt to get Rufus back.

It’s a quiet meal, all of them lost in their thoughts. Flynn keeps shooting glances at her, and she raises her eyebrows at him in question. He shakes his head as if to indicate not now, and she nods.

When they’re done eating, ready to take their dishes to the sink to wash up, Denise clears her throat. “There have been a couple of changes to the plan for tomorrow. Wyatt will be staying here, and Flynn will be accompanying Jiya and Dr. Caldwell to retrieve Rufus.”

Denise’s announcement hits her like a punch to the gut, and she doesn’t hear the rest of it. Flynn is supposed to stay here with her, supposed to be by her side while they wait for Rufus to come back to them. He’s not supposed to leave, injured as he is. He’s still recovering, he shouldn’t be throwing himself into peril again, she can’t face losing him just as they’ve found each other and acknowledged their connection—

By the time she registers her panic and tries to calm herself, she and Flynn are alone at the table. He’s looking at her with that gentle patience in his eyes that she only ever sees directed toward her, and he reaches for her. “Lucy…”

“Not here, okay?” They need to talk, but she doesn’t want to do so where they can be interrupted.

He nods. “I need to meet with Jiya, Denise,and Connor for a briefing, but I’ll find you as soon as that’s over.” He stands, leans over to brush a kiss across her forehead and heads out of the room.

Lucy stands and takes her plate to the sink. She’s absent-mindedly washing the dishes when she hears someone clear their throat in the entry.

It’s Noah, leaning against the doorframe. “So you and that...Eastern European giant, huh?”

Lucy looks over at him sharply, ready to make a scathing retort, when she sees that he doesn’t seem angry or upset. Perhaps a trifle sad, but there’s no judgment in it. She relaxes. “Seems that way.”

“So I’m not the only one who’s moved on, then.”

She smiles at him. “I’m sorry, Noah. For...us. I hope your new girlfriend makes you happier than I did.”

“She does,” he promises, his wry answering smile convincing her that this, at least, won’t leave a permanent wound.

It’s a relief, to know that she doesn’t mess up every single relationship she has.

&&&

Lucy sits on Flynn’s bed, curled up with one of his books. It’s after nine now, and she’s trying desperately to distract herself.

Finally, she hears the door open, and Flynn comes inside. His smile at seeing her on his bed is positively feline, and she feels a pang of desire, the need to finish what they started this morning.

First, though, they need to talk.

He sits next to her, wraps his arm around her. She leans against him for a moment, wanting to bask in the comfort of his embrace.

“So,” he says. He seems at a loss for how to continue, only that he must.

Lucy doesn’t know how to help. “You’re going back to Chinatown.”

“Yes.”

She takes a deep breath before continuing. “You’re going back to a time where you were seriously injured to risk your life  _again_ —”

“Lucy, that’s what we do. That’s what I do, why I’m around,” he explains, his patience wearing thin.

“Is it, Flynn? Is that why you’re here? To risk your life, over and over again, for uncertain gains?” She chokes up, to her embarrassment.

He softens, closes his eyes. He turns to face her. “I’ve told you why I fight, which is a different thing altogether. But yes, that is why I’m here. I’m here for muscle, to make risks so that those of you who are irreplaceable—you, Jiya, Denise, Rufus—aren’t taken from us. I’ve already failed once.”

“Failed? How?!” She’s shrill, but right now, she doesn’t care. “Rufus’ death is not on you. You’re the one who tried to convince us not to take the Lifeboat back, and Jiya tried to convince us not to come. If anything, he’s dead because of me, me and Wyatt and Jessica—”

“I won’t let you blame yourself for that, for Rufus’ own choices! He wanted to save the woman he loved, and he did. And if I knew him at all, he would count his life a worthy sacrifice for her!” Flynn is breathing heavily, hands gripping her shoulders.

She recoils. “And, what? You’re willing to risk the same?”

“Of course I am,” he says, exasperated. His hair falls into his face, and it’s all she can do to keep from brushing it back.

The anger drains from her as suddenly as it had come, and she slumps forward, head resting on his shoulder. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave.”

Flynn pulls her into his lap. “I’ll come back.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No, none of us can,  _moja ljubavi_ ,” he agrees, running one large hand down her back. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight or that I won’t try.”

Her tears dampen his shirt, though he doesn’t seem to mind. “Can you at least promise me you won’t go out of your way to be reckless? I know that’s a tall order, but—”

He cuts her off with a kiss, bruising in its intensity. “I swear, Lucy, I will do everything in my power to come back to you.”

For a moment, she hates how stubborn he is, that he’s unwilling to go tell Denise he’ll stay here. But maybe his stubbornness will be the very thing that brings him back.

&&&

For the rest of her life, Lucy is unable to remember the precise events of that morning. She knows she got up, got dressed, bid farewell to Flynn, Jiya, and Noah, but it exists in an impenetrable fog. Even years later, when the results of of that trip are immutable and written in time, it’s still a blur.

All she knows is that it’s sometime past lunch, and she’s apparently had a productive day. She went with Denise to get the last of the medical supplies they might possibly need; the infirmary is adequately stocked. She’s done some reading, even if she doesn’t remember a word of it, and she’s even eaten lunch.

She can’t wait in command central with Connor; she’s far too on edge, and there’s nothing for her to do. Instead, she sits in the lounge, thumbing through an old history text and pretending to watch  _Downton Abbey_.

Mary and Edith are in the middle of one of their arguments when Wyatt comes in, gingerly taking the seat at the far end of the couch. It’s odd—she doesn’t feel that pang she’s gotten used to upon seeing him. It’s not nothing, her feelings for him, but Lucy knows that they’re completely overshadowed by everything else going on.

“I never know what to do when I’m sitting out a mission either,” Wyatt says, breaking the silence.

She tries smiling but only manages a grimace. “I’ve only sat out two trips back, and I was literally unconscious for one of them and under police surveillance for the other, so this is new for me.”

Gesturing toward the television, he asks, “Mind if I join you?”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

They sit for an indeterminate amount of time, the Crawleys’ antics not quite entertaining enough to ease the tension of waiting for their friends or the tension of things unsaid between them.

Finally, Wyatt sighs. “You and Flynn, huh?”

“Seriously, Wyatt? Of all the things you could possibly say, you pick  _that_?” She’s tired, tired of his expectations that never go both ways, tired of him butting in when it’s not his place, and tired of worrying about Flynn.

He raises his arms in supplication. “Hey, hey, no judgment, I swear. I’m obviously the last person who has a leg to stand on in that regard. And I clearly went about it the wrong way, but I was just trying to ask. To...get to know you.”

“Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical, but it’s been all of two days since you tried to pick a fight with Flynn,” she says, determinedly staring up at whatever is happening onscreen.

“I—yeah, that’s fair. Look, I don’t care for Flynn, and I don’t know if I ever will. But Jiya chewed me out after you left the kitchen that day, and Denise did yesterday, so I can at least recognize when I’m being an idiot. And I do care about you.”

Lucy’s lips tighten. “Do you care about me, or do you care about what I can do for you? How I make you feel?”

He winces. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For...all of it. Like I said in the Bunker, I’ve hurt you. And I’m sorry for that. I—I’ve been an ass. Rufus was right, you know,” he says.

She takes a deep breath.  _Please don’t let him say those three words again_ , she prays. “About what?”

Wyatt smiles sadly, as if she spoke aloud. “He said I was so caught up in the, uh, melodrama of the love triangle thing that I forgot there were other people on the team who love each other. And...that’s not wrong.”

Lucy softens, but takes a fortifying breath. “You chose Jessica, Wyatt. Over and over again. Sometimes loudly, when the rest of us were trying to sleep.” God, she wishes she had a drink.

He seems to agree, disappearing for a few minutes before reappearing with a couple of beers. He hands her one of them and takes his seat, turning to face her. “I did, and that—I can’t apologize for choosing Jess. That’s the one thing in all this mess I don’t regret.”

“Then what’s the apology for? To make yourself feel better?” she spits out.

He takes a long pull from his beer, his shoulders slumping. “God, I’m shit at this. No. No, Lucy. I am sorry about how inconsiderate I’ve been about, well, everyone else. I was even unfair to Jess, since I was still trying to—”

“To maintain the same level of emotional intimacy with me and have a say in my love life, all while you had the love of your life back?” She’s harsh, she knows it, but she’s exhausted from pulling her punches where he’s concerned.

He runs a hand through his hair and says, “Yeah. And it may well have cost me my second chance with her. I can’t help but wonder if she would have gone back to Rittenhouse if I’d…”

“Okay, look, I’m furious with you, and sure, maybe a little. But Wyatt, she’s been brainwashed by Rittenhouse since she was a child. You don’t get to take full responsibility for that,” she says, taking a drink.

“I know it’s not rational,” he says, turning those puppy-dog eyes toward her, “but it is how I feel.”

Her anger begins to ebb away, leaving the ache of exhaustion behind. Silence falls between them, stilted but not as tense as before.

But she still has a question. “You...you told me you loved me. Why?”

He bites his lip and sighs. “Because I do, okay? I—I don’t know if I should have said it, not then. I should have told you back in Hollywood or not at all, and definitely not right after Rufus died.”

That, at least, she could understand, even if it wasn’t fair, kind, or appropriate. “We were all looking for comfort that night, Wyatt.”

“Loving you  _was_  comfort, Lucy,” he says with a sad smile. “But it wasn’t—it wasn’t fair, my putting that on you.”

“I loved you too, you know? And part of me always will,” she says, glancing over at him.

Neither of them are making the slightest attempt at watching  _Downton_  anymore. They both drink from their beer. “When did you stop? Loving me like that?”

She bites her lip, considering. “I don’t really know how to answer that. It still hurt, watching you and Jess kiss, hearing that she’s pregnant. It wasn’t fair of me to resent it, but I did. Sometimes I still do resent that you didn’t choose me.”

“But you didn’t say it back when I told you that night.”

“No,” she says, “I—I wasn’t sure how I felt about you by then. It...it felt like you needed to get it off your chest, without any regard for how it affected me.”

He nods slowly. “And...Flynn.” Seeing the annoyance on her face, he hurries to continue, “Look, I don’t get it, but I kind of do. He was there for you when I either couldn’t be or wouldn’t be. I learned that in Chinatown, even if I’ve tried to ignore it since then.”

She smiles, looking down at her hands. “I wasn’t lying when I told you nothing happened, not like you meant. At first it was just the comfort of talking to someone, of support.”

Wyatt sits there, uncertain whether he wants to hear more. “But then it was more. I’m an idiot, but I’m not blind, Luce. Yesterday morning wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“It’s...a work in progress,” Lucy confesses.

He nods, then closes his eyes as though it pains him. “Just—does he make you happy?”

“Does Jessica make you happy?”

“I—” He doesn’t seem to know how to respond.

She takes the last sip of her beer. “He’s there for me, Wyatt. Sure, sometimes he’s an infuriating ass and does everything wrong.” Wyatt snorts at that, but she continues, “And yes, he makes me happy. I know you don’t get it, but—”

“That’s all I need to know,” he says, and she knows it’s true, knows he’s not lying to her. It might not be easy, but she knows he’ll accept her choice in this.

“Thanks...sweetheart,” she says with a smile. There’s a little bit of melancholy for lost opportunities, but there’s hope too, that they can truly be friends.

“Ma’am,” he says with a grin, tipping an imaginary hat.

She can’t help it; she gets up and goes to hug him. The comfortable weight of his arms around her fills part of her heart that’s been empty for too long. They pull apart, and she’s not ashamed of being a little teary.

“So what happened? With the mission?” Lucy is curious, though she has a feeling she knows.

He laughs, a shaky thing that breaks her heart. “Uh, my—how did Agent Christopher put it?—hissy fit at Flynn the other day came to her attention. Jiya didn’t trust me to be the one to help save Rufus in my current state, so I was sidelined.”

“Oh,” she says blankly.

“It’s—it’s okay. It’s probably for the best. I need to get my shit together, Lucy.”

She wants to reassure him that it’ll be okay, but she can only offer so much. “I’ll be here for you. As your friend.”

His answering smile is bittersweet. “Thanks,” he says, before a lengthy pause. “Would...would you hate me if I say I want to get Jess back?”

She blinks and licks her lips. On one hand, Jessica betrayed them all. On the other, Jessica’s a victim too, and if they can give each other grace (especially Flynn, even she’s not so biased she doesn’t realize how uncomfortable his behavior last year is for everyone else), they can extend that to Jessica. “No. I’d never hate you, Wyatt. Just make sure everyone’s on board, okay?”

“You’ve got it,” he promises.

She needs Garcia to come back, Rufus in tow, needs them to all have this. They have a long fight ahead of them, but they have each other. She has Flynn, Wyatt can get Jessica back, and Jiya will move heaven and earth to get Rufus back. And she’s finally confident that they can get back the the bond that drew them together, her, Rufus, and Wyatt.

It’ll be hard work, but they can do it.

Lucy reaches out to touch his arm, and he clasps her hand in his and squeezes it back. Just then, she feels a ripple in the air. She freezes.

The Lifeboat is coming back.

She and Wyatt exchange a look then stand and run to command central. The Lifeboat blinks back into existence, and her heart is in her throat as they push the stairs toward it.

The door slides open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry? Come scream at/with me!


	5. so now i don't ever have to leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which time travel is complicated, but so are feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotta save Rufus!

It’s silent in the Lifeboat as Garcia watches Jiya and Noah strap themselves in before he does the same.

Hopefully they’ll be able to avoid interacting with the locals, but his trousers and shirt shouldn’t draw attention if it ends up becoming necessary. Jiya’s jeans and mens’ shirt might raise eyebrows if she’s spotted, but not nearly so much as Noah’s modern scrubs and equipment. There’s little to be done for it, though, since Noah is determined to streamline Rufus’ care as much as possible. Besides, speed will be of the essence if they don’t want to start any local folk legends (or destroy the timeline, but he’s used to that threat looming over them). 

“Cosplay?” Jiya suggests in response to Noah’s wordless enquiry about their less-than-typical attire.

He gave her a look. “Sure, cosplay in what Agent Christopher described as a war zone.”

Garcia snorts. He hates to admit it, but he kind of likes Noah.

Jiya shrugs as if to say it was worth a shot and starts the Lifeboat, and they take off. The Lifeboat shudders through time and space, finally stopping back in 1888. Garcia is fairly certain that this is one of his least favorite years, and he prays they never have to revisit it again after this trip.

They emerge into an empty warehouse Jiya knows. Garcia takes out his gun, ready to head out and do what needs to be done.   
  
Jiya stops him with a tug on his sleeve. “Wait, Flynn, hold on.”

“For what?”

“Just think about where we are right now, our other selves. Rufus still hasn’t found me, and I don’t even know where the rest of you all were. Are.”

Suspicion and then comprehension dawn on Noah. Disbelief flickers across his face before he schools his features. “Are you saying—”

“Do you really want to know?” Jiya interrupts bluntly.

Noah rubs a hand across his face. “On second thought, maybe not. Right, I’ll just stick with the medical side of this operation.”

Garcia bites his lip. “Shit. We’re going to have to wait.”

Jiya nods. “If we rush in there, our past selves will know we’re here and that Rufus isn’t actually dead. He’d just be...gone. For over a month, no explanation. That can’t be great for continuity.”

“And,” Garcia continues, with a hesitant look at her, “I think...we need to have assumed Rufus died. He’s why we all came together again, why we had our, uh, visitors from…” He trails off, glancing at Noah.

“From our friends who look like our other friends, right.” She curses, and he wishes it weren’t so—he wishes she didn’t have to hold onto the pain of Rufus’ death, even if they successfully get him back.

He takes a deep breath. “And if he doesn’t at least get very injured here, what will that do with your visions?”

Jiya pales. “If it doesn’t come to pass, then it might have to happen anyway, just not here or now. Or we might end up having to come back to 1888 again. So what do we do?”

“I have an idea,” Garcia says. “But you’re not going to like it.”

&&&

Jiya most certainly does  _not_  like his plan, though she agrees to go along with it. She’s keeping an eye out back at the warehouse while he and Noah move toward the Bison Horn Saloon. They have a small, tight window of opportunity to make this work and there’s little room for hesitation or error.

He tells Noah what he can about the plan, about how even though he’ll hear other cries for help, he has to wait. They’re here for Rufus, after all.

The hardest thing is knowing that they do have to wait for Rufus to get shot, to be gravely injured. Garcia hates that he has to wait for his friend—because Rufus is his friend now, even if they’re not ready to make each other bracelets—to be near death before they can help him.

They stop just down the dusty street from the saloon, tucked behind a pillar. He isn’t sure how long they’re there before he hears the commotion coming from inside, the shots echoing across the way. His heart speeds up, and he takes a deep breath. Noah tenses behind him, but remains in place.

Garcia watches from the shadows as Emma runs across the street to the building next to this one. The angle isn’t right to take her out, and they need events to transpire in a certain way, but his finger itches over the trigger. Jessica follows shortly after, though she rushes off to where, presumably, the Mothership is.

It would be so much easier to end her, he thinks for a wild moment. She doesn’t have a part left to play in this, and eliminating her means there’s one less Rittenhouse agent left. He’s sorely tempted, until he sees Wyatt’s face in his mind’s eye, sees Wyatt begging him not to hurt her as they crouch behind a table on its side.

No matter the strife between him and Wyatt, no matter how erratic Wyatt’s behavior since their first time in Chinatown, something in him would do anything to save his wife and his child. And that’s something Garcia understands all too well. If Wyatt has the opportunity to find Jessica and his unborn child and get them back from Rittenhouse, he deserves the chance to do it.

It’s not long until the team pours out of main door of the saloon. He hears Noah’s intake of breath at the sight of them—Lucy emerging first, followed closely by the rest, including the past versions of Jiya and himself (he can feel Noah’s eyes on him at that, especially when he sees the blood on his shirt and jacket).

He braces himself for action; it’s almost time.

Though he knows it’s coming, he still jumps at the loud echo of Emma’s pistol as she shoots at the front of the Bison Horn before she runs down the old street.

His blood runs hot. It would be so easy to end it now, to kill her. She’s mortally injured Rufus, and unless she’s stopped, she’ll very nearly kill Lucy. And he’s under no illusions that she intends to stop trying to kill them all. It’s tempting to end her and Rittenhouse, here and now.

Then he sees Jiya’s stricken face, mourning her lost love, and he remembers why he’s here. Even if he’s able to kill Emma, this is probably their only chance to get Rufus back. After all, it can hardly be good for the fabric of time to revisit the same incident over and over. He trusts that they will have more opportunities to kill Emma and destroy Rittenhouse.

So instead, he waits. He watches as Rufus reaches up and then slumps over, watches as Lucy takes off. Finally, he watches himself run after her.

Garcia takes careful aim, doing his best to remain hidden. He shoots over Jiya’s and Wyatt’s heads. He takes shots at the porch around them, watches as the rest of them flee. He pulls back when Wyatt stands up, aiming his own gun in his and Noah’s general direction.

Wyatt fires, and Garcia ducks back. He doesn’t want to clip Wyatt, but he will if he has to. He clenches his jaw, ready to do it, when he sees Jiya—past Jiya—shoot up, an odd look on her face as she peers over to where he lurks in the shadows. He fires another warning shot over their heads, and that seems to settle it for her. She yanks on Wyatt’s arm, pulling him down the street without another glance, though not before Wyatt takes one last shot.

His arm stings suddenly, and he knows that shot landed. It feels like a graze, but there’s no time to worry about it. “Let’s go,” he yells to Noah.

The two of them hurry across the street and run to where Rufus is leaning against the railing of the porch. Noah gasps, but goes to work. He pulls out the container holding the spider silk, quickly unscrewing it, pulling out the sticky semi-solid substance into his gloved hands. He shouts at Garcia to push Rufus’ clothing aside so he can find the wound.

Garcia obeys, and he watches as Noah shoves the spider silk over the mess of flesh and torn skin. Noah reaches for his bag, pulls out gauze and tape and expertly applies them. He’s fairly sure the doctor is mumbling prayers to Asklepios—or at least muttering about infection and cleanliness—but he’s not going to judge him for that.

“Ready?” Noah asks as he finishes securing Rufus’ bandages, and Garcia nods in response. Noah stabilizes Rufus’ head and neck while Garcia reaches under Rufus to hoist him up. They stand, slowly but steadily.

Garcia’s arm screams in pain, but he does his best to ignore it. Once Rufus is better, once he’s conscious, he’s definitely going to tease him about losing weight. God, he might be strong, but carrying the dead weight of a 6’ man is a bit much, especially when he’s injured.

They hurry back to the warehouse as quickly as they can. Fortunately, no one seems to want to tangle with them or get involved, so there are no further confrontations.

Jiya stands right outside the door, and her eyes widen as they approach. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive,” Noah says. “In bad shape, and we need to hurry to get him into surgery, but he’s alive.”

Her jaw clenches and she reaches out for Rufus before pulling her hand back. She motions for them to follow.

Garcia nearly weeps with relief when he sees that Jiya took the time to rig a ramp up to the Lifeboat’s opening. They manage to get Rufus in with minimal jostling and close the door behind themselves. With a nod at Jiya, he sinks to the floor to help Noah hold Rufus still.

They’re off.

&&&

As they arrive back in the present, Garcia’s stomach churns.

“Help me?” Noah asks, the green tinge of his cheeks belying how affected he is.

“Of course,” he says, grunting with pain as helps lift Rufus. The door opens, and he can’t do anything other than focus on getting Rufus to the infirmary. He’s aware of movement around them, he can hear Lucy, Wyatt, Denise, and Connor. When he makes it down the stairs, Wyatt is there to help lower Rufus onto the gurney he fetched. Garcia thanks him with a nod and pat to the shoulder after he sets Rufus down.

He, Noah, and Wyatt wheel Rufus into the infirmary, the others following as quickly as they can. Noah rushes to check on everything, prepping for surgery in their makeshift operating room. “Okay, everyone out, unless you have some medical training. Not you, Flynn, you go and get your arm cleaned and stitched up.”

Lucy squeaks in the background while Denise and Wyatt scrub their hands and prepare to do what they can for Rufus. Connor tries to lead Jiya out, but she pushes him away. “No!”

No one says anything else about it, and she and Connor stay there in the corner. 

He walks out of the infirmary, hurries over to the nearest bin and throws up into it. His head rings as he bends over it, and he feels cool hands on his back. He knows without looking it’s Lucy, and he leans back into her gentle touch.

“Time travel is a bitch,” he says.

She gives a sobbing laugh in response. “Are you—how badly are you hurt?”

“I don’t think it’s too bad, but I need to clean it out and stitch it up.”

“Let me help,” she says, and he nods, too tired and weak to try to argue.

He looks down at her, sees she’s gathered materials to clean and stitch him up. More than anything, he wants to sweep her into his arms, melt into her embrace, but she’s focused on patching him up.

Lucy leads him to the kitchen. “Can you take off your shirt?” At his raised eyebrow, she gives him a withering glance. “It’ll be easier to clean you up.”

“Yes,  _moja ljubavi_ ,” he says, reaching up to unbutton his shirt. He moves slowly enough that eventually Lucy bats his hands away and does it herself.

She’s gentle as she pulls off his shirt. She winces at the sight of his arm, but doesn’t say anything. Running the cloth she brought over under hot water, she mops up the worst of it before using the alcohol solution to clean it. It stings like a bitch, and he draws in a breath.

She’s looking over at the needle and sutures, clearly at a loss for how to proceed. He’s still bleeding, but it’s not profuse or particularly dangerous. He reaches out for her and rests his hand on her waist. Some of the tension drains from her shoulders, but she looks up at him, brow furrowed in question.

“Is—do you still have your memories of before?” he asks, afraid of her answer.

She considers the question, then answers slowly. “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? Rufus was dead, or we thought he was, and we had to leave him.”

“Wyatt shot me. To be fair, I don’t think he realized it was  _me_ ,” Garcia tells her with a wry twist of his lips. “Not that I’m sure that would make a difference.”

She smiles but shakes her head. “We never talked about what happened right after I left to chase Emma, so I don’t know. But I...I told him about us, so I don’t think he’d try to shoot you anymore.”

“Oh,” he says, gobsmacked.

“I—is that okay?”

He rushes to reassure her. “Of course, Lucy. I—I’m just surprised.”

She bites her lip. “Good surprised?”

God, she’s wonderful, and she doesn’t even seem to realize how gone for her he is. “The best,” he says, reaching up to cup her face with his good hand.

“Garcia,” she whispers.

Something inside him breaks at hearing his name—his given name—from her lips. It’s the first time anyone has said his name in years, and he hears a gasp that he belatedly realizes came from him. He leans forward to kiss her,  _I love you_  burning on his lips.

He brushes his lips across hers. She sighs against him, bringing her hands to rest on the planes of his chest.

The sound of someone clearing their throat stops him from deepening the kiss. It’s Denise, standing in the door frame. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says, sounding genuinely apologetic.

Lucy stays in his arms but pulls back to take in the dark circles under Denise’s eyes and how dry and clean her hands look. “How is Rufus?”

Garcia’s throat closes. He can’t believe he nearly forgot for a moment—

Cutting off what undoubtedly would have become a self-loathing spiral, Denise answers, “He’s alive. Noah is finishing up the operation, with Wyatt’s help. Rufus flatlined once, but we brought him back, and Noah said things look okay, so I came out here to check on things.”

His stomach churns at the news, but part of him rejoices. If Rufus has died, even in just technically, that means Jiya’s vision has come to pass. It’s done. And now he’s back. They just have to help him heal. He’s not sure it’s worth much, but he’s willing to beg God for this one boon. “I’ll go help as soon as I get my arm stitched up,” he says.

“No, you won’t, Flynn,” Denise tells him with a dirty look. “I called Kerry, and she’s on her way to check on your arm. I don’t want it to get infected.”

“It’s not that bad, Denise. I promise I’ll be back to normal and fully useful in short order,” he says, hoping the snark covers the way insecurity wells inside him.

She scowls at him. “You idiot, I don’t care if you’re useful or not. You’re part of this team, and I want to make sure you’re okay.”

He chokes up. What can he possibly say to that?

Lucy saves him from having to respond. “Good. So, uh, I don’t have to stitch him up right now?”

“No,” Denise says with a quick smile. “I want Kerry to make sure he didn’t aggravate his old injury—I know, I know, you think it’s just a graze—and then stitch it up herself. No offense intended, Lucy, but I’d rather have a doctor do it.”

“None taken. I think we’d all prefer that.”

Garcia chuckles to himself. As much as he loves Lucy, he definitely prefers a qualified medical professional be the one threading a needle through his skin, and Noah’s a little busy.

Within half an hour, Dr. Weaver arrives. In the meantime, Lucy has made tea and brought water bottles to everyone who is interested or able to take them.

Dr. Weaver checks out his injury, and he’s relieved when she tells him that it does in fact seem to be just a graze. He’ll need to keep an eye on it to prevent it from getting infected, but it shouldn’t set back his PT or recovery much, if at all. In short order, he’s stitched up and ordered to eat something and go to bed. Kerry heads into the infirmary to see if there’s anything she can do to assist Noah while Lucy helps Garcia into another button-up shirt.

There’s no way any of them are going to sleep before Rufus is out of surgery, so Lucy puts together sandwiches and snacks. Garcia brews a pot of coffee, and they sit down next to each other to wait for news.

They’re leaning on each other when Noah and the others finally emerge and come into the kitchen. If Wyatt’s mouth tightens at the sight of them together, it’s the most anyone reacts, and he says nothing.

“Rufus is out of surgery. It went well, we just need to wait and see. I’ll pull a cot into the infirmary so I can get some rest but wake up if I’m needed,” Noah says, grabbing a sandwich from the plate on the table.

Garcia lets out a sigh of relief. “Jiya’s in there?”

“Yeah, she’s staying with him. I’d like her to sleep, but…” He trails off, and they all nod in understanding. No, Jiya won’t be resting, not while the love of her life is still in this kind of danger.

“I’ll stay nearby, too, in case you need help,” Dr. Weaver says to Noah. “It’s been a few years since I worked in an OR regularly, but I’m here if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

After they eat, everyone starts to drift away. Garcia stands to head to his room, and Lucy follows. He sits on his bed, but she hesitates in the doorway. “Is—is it okay that I’m here?”

_Please never leave_ , he begs her internally. “I would be more bothered if you left,” he says.

She bites her lip, and it awakens something in him. The tiredness plaguing him departs in a rush of longing. Longing, and the joy and relief of being alive and here with each other.

He stands and makes his way over to her. She reaches out for him and tangles her hands in his shirt, pulling him closer. He caresses the soft curls of her hair as he wraps his other arm around her waist, trapping her hands between them. He walks them backward until they’re pressed against the door, not an inch of space keeping them apart.

“Garcia,” she breathes, and he swallows. He needs to be kissing her now.

He pulls back to hoist her up into his arms. She squeaks in surprise, but it turns to a moan as he covers her mouth with his. She melts into his embrace, wrapping her legs around his waist.

He lets out a desperate groan as their tongues meet. He presses her against the door, and she rocks against him.

Garcia can feel himself stiffening in his pants, blood coursing southward. He needs to figure out a way to keep holding her while taking their clothes off, because the idea of not touching her? Unconscionable.

Fortunately, Lucy seems to be of the same mind. She pushes at his chest, and he sets her down as gently as he can manage. In the span of time it takes him to unbutton and remove his trousers and briefs, Lucy has removed all her clothes and is pulling at the buttons of his shirt.

Eventually, she decides that patience isn’t a virtue she wants to bother with, because she tears at his shirt, sending the buttons flying. He kisses her again, not bothering to remove the remains of the shirt. Denise won’t be happy at having to replace this shirt too, but that’s a problem for future them.

She tries to hike one thigh around his hips, but the height disparity stymies her until he lifts her up.

They gasp, both of them, at the feel of skin on skin. He can feel her core against him, and she’s already soaking. His erection is trapped between them, and he shudders as she grinds against him.

“Are you—?” He asks against her lips as she rocks against him.

She nods. “Please, Garcia,” she begs. She reaches between them as he adjusts his hold on her, and she lines him up at her entrance.

Lucy sinks onto him, and it’s all he can do to not give into the white-hot heat of pleasure.

He stills for a moment and buries his head in the crook of her neck. “ _Volim te_ ,” he whispers as he nuzzles her.

She wraps her arms around his neck and squeezes her inner muscles around him. “I need…”

“What do you need, Lucy?” He asks, ready to give her whatever she demands.

One of her hands trails from his neck to cup his cheek to pull his face to hers. “You.”

He clenches his jaw and licks his lip, nodding at her. He slides out of her an inch before thrusting back in, setting a quick, frantic pace.

“Harder,” she says with a moan.

Garcia leans them back against the door as he pushes into her. The part of him not preoccupied with bringing her pleasure spares a thought for the sounds of their lovemaking, but he brushes it aside. After all, the Mine is sturdier than the Bunker was, and he doubts anyone is milling around the halls anyway.

And frankly, he doesn’t care right now.

Lucy reaches down between them and rubs at her clit as he fucks her, and then she’s breathing heavily against him, clenching around him as she comes. He thrusts into her a few more times, sucking a mark into her neck. Then, his climax washes over him, and he’s adrift in her.

He manages to keep his hold on her as he comes back to and catches his breath. When he finally sets her down, he lets her pull him into one last lingering kiss. He feels a twinge of desire again and wishes he were ten, twenty years younger, but he’s so glad to be here now.

“I’m going to go clean up a little, then I’ll be right back,” she says, pulling on one of his sweaters. It comes down nearly to her knees, and he can’t resist brushing his lips across her forehead.

Sated and exhausted, his arm aching (worth it), Garcia slips under the covers. He has every intention of waiting up for Lucy to return, but sleep claims him in a matter of seconds.

&&&

He wakes up with no idea as to the time, but Lucy is warm in his arms, their legs tangled together. Garcia glances at the clock on the bedside table and sees that it’s just before six. Early, then, but morning.

He’s still tired and his arm is sore, but he’s tempted to try to ease out of bed. He could make Lucy coffee, find out how Rufus is doing…

Or he could stay here and keep on holding her, he decides as Lucy snores against his chest and burrows against him.

He tries to will himself back to sleep, but it becomes evident after a while that it’s not going to happen. Around seven, she finally stirs.

She runs her fingers through his chest hair as she looks up and smiles at him. “Mmm. Morning.”

“Good morning, beautiful,” he says, pulling her on top of him. What she does next is  _very_  distracting, and it’s a good half hour later before he’s capable of rational thought again.

“Well, I was going to offer to get you coffee, but I think you’re awake,” he says, trying to catch his breath.

She giggles. “Like you weren’t  _up_  for it.”

He chuckles, then peppers her face with kisses. “I love you, Lucy.”

She doesn’t tense or stiffen, just smiles at him. “I know.”

Garcia raises an eyebrow. “Should I call you Han instead?”

She slaps his arm—his good arm—and shakes her head. “Idiot.” After a pause, she continues, “I’ve been learning Croatian. Not much, just—”

“Duolingo?” He asks with a smirk.

Lucy rolls her eyes at him. “Okay, not all of us know at least six languages. And Slavic languages are hard.”

“I’m not judging,  _draga_.”

“‘Dear,’ or ‘dear one,’” she translates with a curve of her lips.

He runs drags his fingers down the smooth skin of her back. “Yes.”

She bites her lip, considering what to say next. “I—I care about you. So much.”

He softens, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Now that, I know.”

“I’m not...I’m not quite ready to say the other words back yet. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel them, it’s just—”

Garcia cuts her off with a lingering kiss to her lips.

When she pulls back, chest heaving and a glassy look in her eyes, she tells him, “I’ll get there. You do so much for the team—and for me, especially—and I don’t want you to think you’re not wanted or needed. I do, you know. Need you.”

“Lucy,” he begins, but is immediately unsure how to continue. “So much of what’s between us is—well, you don’t have to say anything, if you’re not ready. Even if you’re never ready, this is enough.”

“You’re ours, you know?” It’s a bit of a non sequitur, but he’s willing to go along with it. “The team’s. You’re one of us. And you’re mine.”

He can feel tears welling up in his eyes, and he buries his head in her hair and pulls her close.

They lie there in the morning quiet, and he can feel the jagged edges of his soul knitting back together. He’s  _hers_ , and that’s the best thing he’s been in a long, long while.

There’s a knock on the door then, and they both jump up.

It’s Denise. “Rufus woke up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone still along for this ride. There's one more chapter left, and it'll serve more as an epilogue. Can't wait to see you all next week!


	6. every loveliness, it all came true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ending and new beginnings.

“And by the power vested in me by a dubious online church, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Denise says with a wide smile. “Oh, go on, kiss each other already!”

Jiya giggles as Rufus pulls her into his arms. She wraps her arms around him and returns his kiss enthusiastically.

Off to the side, Lucy beams at her friends. Garcia and Wyatt clap, and Connor wipes away tears (after giving away both the bride and the groom. It was an interesting ceremony).

It’s six weeks since they got Rufus back. It’s been a long haul, but Rufus is doing so much better. He’s still on the mend, but he’s here on his feet, holding his new wife.

He’d woken up the morning after his surgery. He hadn’t stayed awake for long, and he hadn’t been able to speak for a while. Noah had stayed for nearly a week to ensure Rufus’ continuing recovery. He’d also made it clear when he left that he was more than willing to come back, if they needed him.

Fortunately, they haven’t. Rufus’ recuperation, while not without small bumps, has been largely uneventful. To their surprise, he’s even thrilled about the fact that they were unable to remove some of the spider silk from his neck.

(“I’m basically Spiderman! I have spider DNA and spider byproduct in my body at all times!”)

Except for the two missions they’ve had to go on (which were accomplished with relative ease, thankfully), Jiya has hardly left Rufus’ side. It’s been good to see them getting to know each other all over again, between Jiya’s time in the past and Rufus having died or having had a near-death experience, depending how you look at it.

Lucy is glad they’ve made it here. Between fighting Rittenhouse and some of their personal issues, their lives are messy and sometimes brutal. It’s times like this, surrounded by people she loves, that she remembers why they do this, why it’s worth it.

She steps closer to Garcia and leans into him. Smiling down at her, he places his hand at the small of her back in a quick caress.

Obviously, everyone knows they’re together at this point, even Connor. But without a crisis actively upon them, they’re not the type to flaunt the bond between them. With as messy and complicated as things have been, it just seems inappropriate, and it’s just not them. Wyatt is okay with it, for the most part, though he and Garcia aren’t friends. He’s trying to reach out to Jess, but it’s hard, and Lucy doesn’t want to rub her new love in his face.

She should tell Garcia, she thinks, as he claps Rufus’ back and gingerly returns Jiya’s hug. He deserves to know how happy she is with him, how much better her life is for his steadying presence.

“All right, time to party,” Rufus says, grabbing a champagne bottle and wrapping his other arm around Jiya.

“Not too much,” Denise cautions. “We can’t all be inebriated, just in case—”

“Yeah, yeah, Rittenhouse,” Lucy says, hugging her to soften the sass.

Denise raises an eyebrow, fighting a smile.

Wyatt comes back into the lounge area, arms full of the booze they have squirrelled away. “I won’t drink, so we can hold down the fort together, Denise. Besides, we all need to let our hair down and celebrate today.”

No one has any arguments there.

&&&

She’s tipsy, giggling as she stumbles into Garcia’s room after him. He turns around to catch her, chuckling as he pulls her close. Lucy is starting to suspect he might be a little tipsy himself.

The makeshift reception for Rufus and Jiya is over now. It was delightful, all of them working together to make it as festive as they could under the circumstances. Denise and Wyatt had dutifully abstained from drinking so they could be alert if Rittenhouse did anything, but fortunately, that hadn’t been a concern. In any case, it hadn’t made the occasion any less joyful, and they’d dispersed only after much laughter and teasing the newlyweds about their honeymoon (they’d rearranged the infirmary, made it as much of a bridal suite as they could, and the results are surprisingly nice).

It was lovely, and Lucy smiles as she flops onto the bed. Flynn’s eyes are crinkled in amusement, but the look in his eyes is that familiar adoration. He tugs at his tie—and oh, she’s glad they decided to dress up for this, because Garcia Flynn in a suit is a sight she’ll never tire of—and tosses it onto the chair holding the books she’s using to research a planned mission they have coming up.

She watches breathlessly as he shrugs off his jacket, nodding at him to continue when he pauses at the buttons of his shirt.

Once he’s stripped down to his boxer briefs, he joins her on the bed.

She trails one nail along her own neckline while Flynn follows her motions hungrily. When she pinches at her nipple through the silk of her dress, he snaps. He lunges toward her and tackles her into the bed.

Her giggle turns into a moan when he kisses her, his tongue moving against hers. He kisses her like he wants to possess her, wants to drive every other thought from her head.

Somehow, he doesn’t realize she’s already  _his_.

Lucy breaks away from his lips with a gasp as he runs his hands under the skirt of her dress up her thighs. She burns for him, the roughness of his palms along her smooth skin lighting her ablaze.

She reaches for him, eager to touch whatever part of him she can reach. She grasps at his shoulders, nails digging in as she drags her lips down the column of his neck. She nips at him, soothing her bites with her tongue, knows she’s leaving marks. But god, does she not care.

“Hold on,” he says, and she nods against him, though her mind is too clouded with lust to quite understand. Then he tugs at her dress, and she obligingly sits back, letting him help her pull it over her head. His eyes widen when he discovers she’s forgone a bra.

She loves that after weeks, nay, months of sleeping together, he still looks every bit as awed and gobsmacked at the sight of her naked body as he did the first time.

Well, mostly naked—she starts to squirm out of her underwear when he grunts and swats her hands away, intent on removing them himself.

When he succeeds, he settles between her thighs, lip on hers. His hands are gentle as they caress her breasts, but it’s enough for her burn with desire. Garcia’s weight against her is familiar now, but it affects her all the same. The only thing between them now is the fabric of his undergarments, and they’re not hiding how hard he is for her.

He buries his face in her neck, breath hot against her skin, thrusting against her. She moans, wraps her arms around him, hooks her legs around his hips as she tries to grind against him.

Garcia pulls back, disentangling their limbs as he starts to kiss a path down her body. He dips his hand between her thighs, his eyes darkening when he finds how wet, how desperate she is for him.

Lucy pants as he slides a finger into her and resumes his leisurely progression down her body. It feels good, his finger inside her, and she loves the way his tongue makes her see stars, but right now that isn’t what she wants. She wants,  _needs_ , him inside her.

He makes a sound of protest when she pulls him up, fingers tangled in his hair. Any objections fade away when she tugs at the waist of his underwear. He shimmies them off in a hurry, returning to press against her.

She can feel him at her entrance. “Please, Garcia,” she begs in response to his unspoken question.

He pushes into her in one smooth stroke—god, she’s wet for him—and she keens at the familiar, pleasurable stretch and burn of him entering her. He curses against her lips, hooking an arm under one of her thighs and pressing down into the mattress. The angle changes, and he sinks deeper inside her.

“God, Lucy,” he whispers, hoarse and desperate. She pats his shoulder, wraps her other leg around his hips and squeezes around him.

He moans and pulls out a couple of inches before slamming back into her. He sets a brutal pace, and it’s not gentle, it’s raw, but she loves it, loves  _him_. And she’s close, so close, she’s frantic for it. Her climax washes over her, claims her the way he’s claimed her, totally and completely.

She cries out against him, convulsing in his arms as the world narrows to just the two of them, to their connection, to their bodies. He thrusts into her a few more times before stiffening, pulsing inside her as he comes.

Lucy wraps herself around him as he slumps against her, trying to catch their breath. After a few minutes, he reluctantly pulls out of her embrace and cleans them up.

Garcia settles back into bed beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she tucks her head onto his chest.  

A few moments pass before she breaks the peaceful silence. “Do you think they’ll be okay?” Lucy asks. Her buzz from the alcohol is gone, and though she’s  _very_  sated, sleep isn’t happening yet.

“Rufus and Jiya?” He asks, sounding sleepy.

She turns in his arms to face him. “Of course, who else?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Just...you don’t think they rushed it?”

He’s quiet, and for a moment Lucy wonders if he’s fallen asleep. Then he turns onto his own side, draping his arm over her waist. “Is there a reason you think they have?”

She frowns at the measured control in his voice; he’s clearly hiding something, not telling her what he’s thinking. Is he worried that she thinks the two of them have hurried into this? “They’ve known each other a while, but they’ve only been dating for a little over a year. And not that they don’t love each other or that it won’t work, but they have a lot to work on. Between Jiya being so much different after being in the past, and Rufus having to deal with death...I don’t know. I’m just wondering, that’s all.” She reaches out for him, skimming her fingers over the lines of his chest.

He lets out a breath and pulls her closer to him. “They  _do_  love each other. They’ve gone to hell and back for each other, and that means more than the length of time they’ve been together.”

“And you love me, even though we’ve only been together a short time,” she says, a question that’s not quite a question. Her thoughts are jumbled, and she’s not entirely sure what she’s asking or where she’s going with this.

“You know I do,  _moja ljubavi_ ,” he says, brushing his lips across her collarbone. He sounds confused, and she can’t blame him.

Lucy trails her hand up to caress his face, smoothing over his furrowed brow. “I don’t know, I just...what if they decide it’s too much? Their different experiences? Or that they’ve changed too much?”

He runs his hand down the length of her spine. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. Rufus and Jiya fought time and death to be together, so I don’t think an argument or five will come between them.” He pauses, kisses her forehead. “They will argue, you know. You’re right, they have changed, and that’s bound to have effects. But they’ll be fine.”

She smiles at him in the dark. “How do you do that? Hold onto your faith like that?”

“Because you’re here, in my arms,” Garcia says.

There’s a rush of affection at the certainty in his voice, and she feels the calm she associates with him wrap her. “...huh?”

He sighs, but she can tell he’s smiling—even if it is in that self-deprecating way he has about him. “I’ve done horrible things, Lucy. To you, to this team, to history, to strangers. But somehow, you find a way to see the best in me. You let me hold you, and you let me stand by you. If I’m allowed that, then it’s easy to have faith.”

She swallows the unexpected lump in her throat. “They do love each other, so much. And if we can work it out…”

“...anyone can?” He says with a laugh.

She snorts. He’s right; they’re a far more improbable match, but they make it work.

Garcia turns onto his back, pulling her half onto him. “Have I ever told you about my first argument with Lorena?”

Her heart doesn’t twist, and there’s not even a twinge of her previous insecurity at the mention of the former Mrs. Flynn. “Tell me,” she says.

“I don’t even remember what started the fight, probably me making some comment about one of her quirks—I know, hard to believe, me saying something foolish—but we ended up having a huge row about how we didn’t appreciate each other. We didn’t speak to each other for three days.”

Lucy smiles, the image of a younger, softer but no less stubborn Garcia Flynn coming up against the strong will of an equally stubborn woman.

(He definitely has a type, but she has no complaints there.)

“How did you get past it?”

“I couldn’t bear it. I missed her, missed her humming and dancing and her laughter. So I went to the apartment she shared with one of the other nurses, and begged her to forgive me. She didn’t let me finish my first sentence before she hugged me and told me that I was an idiot, but I was her idiot,” Garcia tells her, and she can feel his dimpled grin against the crown of her head.

It’s not an unfamiliar story. “That sounds about right.”

“The next day I asked her to marry me. To my shock, she said yes, but only after I promised I’d work on telling her what I was thinking or feeling.”

Lucy laughs. “We could probably stand to do that. Make an agreement to actually talk through things instead of making assumptions, that is.”

He gasps dramatically. “What, you don’t enjoy our misunderstandings that we could avoid if we actually told each other things?”

Her mouth twitches, even though her smile fades. “I love our connection, Garcia, and the way you usually know me so well. But yes, using our words would probably be a good thing.”

He shifts, pushing himself up to kiss her, a sweet, lingering thing that takes her breath away. “Deal.”

“I love you,” she whispers when they pull back.

He’s pole-axed. She can’t resist kissing him again, which seems to finally bring him back to life. He kisses her deeply, enthusiastically, flipping them over on the bed so that she’s lying beneath him. “I love you more than I can say.”

Running her fingers through his hair, she brushes her lips against his cheek, chin, and his neck. “It—it’s mutual. I have for a while, it just took me some time.”

“You’ve been my north star for years, but I’ve loved you, body and soul, since 1936.”

She tears up. “I don’t know when, exactly. ‘I was in the middle before I knew I had begun,’ you know?”

He knows. She can feel how well he knows it the caress of his hands, his mouth against hers, the way they move against each other.

Perhaps some things can be said wordlessly after all.

&&&

Lucy wakes up, as she has for the past months, to the smell of coffee. She stretches and reaches for the mug that Garcia left on the nightstand for her.

He’s standing at the dresser, back toward her as he gets dressed. She watches silently as he pulls on his pants, admires the rippling of the muscles in his back as he pulls on his shirt. He smirks when he turns and finds her staring.

She sits up and takes a sip of her coffee. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he says, crossing the room and leaning over to kiss her. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a baby. How long have you been up?”

He grabs his own coffee and comes to sit beside her. “Not long, just enough to take a quick shower and make coffee for us.”

“Mmm, if you had waited, I could have joined you in the shower,” she tells him, enjoying the heat that rises in his cheeks.

“Rain check?” he manages.

She kisses his cheek and stands. Garcia reaches for her, but she dodges out of his grasp. It’s tempting to stay in his arms, but if she does, she’s not sure they’ll leave the room today.

Lucy finds her robe and slips it on, not wanting to put yesterday’s dress back on to trek to the bathroom.

Garcia hands something to her—her towel and toiletry case. She thanks him absently, “Oh, I didn’t realize these were in here.”

She can see the amusement in his eyes, and a smile tugs at his lip. “They’ve been in here for over a month, _draga_.”

She processes this, realizing she’s paid zero attention to the fact that she always seems to have a clean towel here at the ready in his room, and that her things often seem within easy reach. She bites her lip, uncertainty pooling in her stomach. “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” he says, blinking at her. “In fact, it’s…the opposite of a problem.”

“Oh,” she says, relaxing.

“I like your things being in here, and I like you being here, Lucy.” He gently drags his thumb over her cheek.

She leans into his hand. “I like being here. I love you,” she adds (she finds she really doesn’t want to stop saying it, now that she’s started).

“I love you too,” he says, “so much that I wouldn’t mind more of your things being here. You already sleep here, there’s no need for you to have to run back to your bedroom every morning for a change of clothes. I understand if you still want to have your own space, but I can make sure you have a drawer or two, and—”

She drops her towel and bath caddy, flings her arms around his neck. “Yes.” It surprises her, but she’s slept here since before they got Rufus back. She might technically have her own room next to Jiya’s and Rufus’, but at this point, it’s just a formality.

“That’s okay with you?” he asks.

“More than okay,” Lucy reassures him. He pulls her close, and she reflects that maybe they don’t have anything pressing that will pull them from  _their_  bedroom just yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! Every one of you is fantastic. If you want to see more in this 'verse or if you're interested in other prompts, hit me up on tumblr under the same name!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, drop me a review or come scream at/with me on tumblr!


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